Chapter 6.4

The Church’s Testimony to the Grace of Saving Faith

Table of Topics

A) The Fallacy of a “50/50” Debate in the Church Between Gracism & Fairism

B) Gracism in the Early Church: Tertullian, Athanasius, & Augustine

C) Gracism in Early Roman Catholicism

D) Gracism in the Protestant Reformation: Luther & Calvin

E) Gracism in the Great Awakening: Whitefield & Edwards

F) The Fairism of John Wesley

G) The Gracist Charles Spurgeon

H) Gracism in the Modern Church

I) Fairism in the Modern Church

Extras & Endnotes

Primary Points

• Fairism believes that spiritually dead humans are capable of saving faith without being given a New Nature through spiritual regeneration.
• There have been relatively very few influential Bible Teachers in the history of the Church who believed in fairism.
• A thousand years before the Reformation the Council of Orange condemned foundational teachings of fairism and decreed: “If anyone says of [saving] faith [and] its beginning and the very desire for faith, by which we believe in Him who justifies the ungodly; if anyone says that this belongs to us by nature and not by a gift of grace, that is, by the inspiration of the Holy Spirit amending our will and turning it from unbelief to faith and from godlessness to godliness, it is proof that he is opposed to the teaching of the Apostles.”
• William Temple: “The only thing of my very own which I contribute to my redemption is the sin from which I need to be redeemed.”
• Augustine and Luther wrote much more about Calvinism than Calvin did.
• The First Great Awakening revival in America was led by gracists.
• John Wesley was converted through Calvinists, a view which he later claimed was a hindrance to evangelism.
• Spurgeon: “If there be but one stitch in the celestial garment of our righteousness which we ourselves are to put in, we are lost. From top to bottom this salvation is of the Lord.”
• The vast majority of respected Teachers in the 19^th and 20^th centuries have promoted gracism and denounced fairism.

A) The Fallacy of a “50/50” Debate in the Church Between Gracism & Fairism

A fundamental difference between fairism (i.e. Arminianism, synergism) and gracism (i.e. Calvinism, monergism) is their perspective on the spiritual capabilities of unregenerate humans. Fairists generally believe that spiritually dead humans are capable of saving faith in Christ without being given a New Nature through spiritual regeneration. Unfortunately, such beliefs are also a fundamental violation of the great majority of opinion on the matter throughout the history of the Christian faith, and a salvation that is by God’s grace alone instead of a human work.

In the modern debate between gracism and fairism we often hear something like, “These things have been debated since the beginning of the Church,” or “There have been plenty of smart and good men on both sides of this debate.” Such statements imply several falsehoods. First, it is implied that this debate has been somewhat “50-50” with both sides being relatively equally held in the Church’s history. If this were true then it would suggest that we should not try to choose a position because the Bible must teach both, for how could such a multitude of good men be wrong.

The fact is, however, that there have been relatively very few influential Bible Teachers in the history of the Church who believed in fairism. The most “famous” or influential Christian leaders or Teachers that fairist Dave Hunt can list for supporting his view are Richard Baxter, John Newton, John and Charles Wesley, John Bunyan, and H. C. G. Moule. ^[1] Actually, however, even Baxter and Bunyan can be quoted in favor of gracism. ^[2] Clearly, then, the historical supporters of fairism is an exceeding thin list.

If we add the “four point Calvinists,” throughout the history of the Church who, while rejecting the idea that Christ died only for the elect, generally supported gracism and denounced the central tenets of fairism, then the Church’s historical support for gracism multiplies exponentially to include virtually every historically significant leader or Teacher in the history of the Church.

In fact, the number of influential Church leaders that fairism can point to in the history of the Church to support their view are extremely few, and were opposed by the most respected and orthodox Christians of their day. When Pelagius (354-420) promoted fairism, Augustine strongly opposed him and Pelagius was declared a heretic at the Council of Carthage (418). When Erasmus (1466-1536) wrote in support of fairism, Martin Luther (1483-1546) wrote what he called his most important writing to denounce him. Perhaps the greatest support of all the tenets of fairism in the history of the Church is the medieval Roman Catholic Church, which again, the orthodox Protestant Reformers did all they could to correct their false teaching. And Jonathan Edwards (1703-1758) wrote a great deal to refute what John Wesley (1703-1791) wrote in their day in support of fairism.

The most historical support fairism can claim for itself is Pelagius, Erasmus, the Roman Catholic Church, John Wesley, and Charles Finney. That is not a very long list and few would claim they are among the Church’s greatest examples of sound theology. Much greater Teachers opposed them all.

The debate between gracism and fairism has never been even close to “50/50”, until very recently in Church history. And for most of the Church’s history, when fairism was espoused, the most respected leaders of the Church denounced it. From the very beginning of the Christian Church, and continuing for over 1700 years until Charles Finney (1792-1875) popularized fairism in America, gracism was the predominant view of orthodox Christianity. ^[3] And as we will see below, even Finney regretted significant parts of this position at the end of his life. No, it has only been very recently in Church history that this debate has even appeared “50/50,” and we doubt it is because Christians know their Bibles better.

Accordingly, James Montgomery Boice (1938-2000), a respected leader and teacher in 20^th century Evangelicalism, wrote regarding specifically the historical view of the nature of unregenerated humanity:

In Christian doctrine the crux of this matter is in how we regard the human will. Is it free to choose God, even in its fallen state? Some Christians believe this. Or is it unable to choose God, being bound by sin, as others say? This matter has been debated at length in the long history of the Christian church, and the church has always come out on the side of what Martin Luther called the will’s “bondage.” ^[4]

We wish that was still true.

B) Gracism in the Early Church: Tertullian, Athanasius, & Augustine

Long before the Protestant Reformation, many Church leaders were concerned to defend the biblical fact that saving faith was the work of God. As early as the second century Bishop Theophilus of Antioch (c. 170) had written: “God is seen by those who are enabled to see Him when they have the eyes of their soul opened.” ^[5] About A. D. 200 the Church Father Tertullian, representing the view of the Western Church at the time, also wrote to unbelievers regarding saving faith, “It is not given to you by God because you do not ascribe it to God alone.” ^[6]

Although the Bible scholar Origen was too often not a faithful interpreter of Scripture, he did write around 220 A. D.: “Our free will . . . or human nature is not sufficient to seek God in any manner.” ^[7]

About the year 300 Bishop Arnobius wrote the heathen, “You place the salvation of your souls in yourselves, and trust you may be made gods by your inward endeavor, yet it is not in our own power to reach things above.” ^[8]

Around the year 350 the renowned Church Father Athanasius wrote, “To believe [in Christ for salvation] is not ours, or in our power, but the Spirit’s who is in us, and abides in us.” ^[9]

Around 400, the Bible scholar Jerome, wrote:

See how great is the help of God, and how frail the condition of man that we cannot by any means fulfill this, that we repent, unless the Lord first convert us. . . . When He says, “No man can come to Me,” He breaks the proud liberty of free will; for man can desire nothing, and in vain he endeavors. ^[10]

Nonetheless, sometime later Pelagius (c. 354-420) introduced the ancient heresy that all humans were free and able to have a saving faith in Christ. In response, St. Augustine (354-430), considered by both Protestants and Romanists as the most influential theologian in all of Church history, wrote much regarding saving faith in opposition to Pelagius, and the fairism of today, including:

[Saving] faith is to be attributed to God. . . . [Saving] faith is made a gift. These men [Pelagians then, fairists now], however, attribute faith to free will, so grace is rendered to faith not as a gratuitous gift, but as a debt. . . . They must cease from saying this. ^[11]

Accordingly, Augustine (c. 354-430) and the universal Church at the time, denounced Pelagius and his followers as heretics and excommunicated them because the Church thought their claims about the spiritual abilities of unregenerated humans attacked the heart of the Gospel. On the issue of the nature of saving faith the most influential theologian of all of Church history wrote:

Can we possibly, without utter absurdity, maintain that there first existed in anyone the good virtue of a good will, to entitle him to the removal of his heart of stone? How can we say this, when all the time this heart of stone itself signifies precisely a will of the hardest kind, a will that is absolutely inflexible against God? For if a good will comes first, there is obviously no longer a heart of stone. . . .

Since these things are so, everything that is commanded to human beings by the Lord in the holy Scriptures, for the sake of testing human free will, is either something we begin to obey by God’s goodness, or is demanded in order to show us our need of grace to do it. Indeed, a person does not even begin to be changed from evil to good by the first stirrings of faith, unless the free and gratuitous mercy of God produces this in him. . . .

So, therefore, we should think of God’s grace as working from the beginning of a person’s changing towards goodness, even to the end of its completion, so that he who glories may glory in the Lord. For just as no-one can bring goodness to perfection without the Lord, so no one can begin it without the Lord. ^[12]

You [Julian of Eclanum] think that a person is helped by the grace of God in a good work . . . Why have you merely said that a person is always ‘helped’ in a good work by God’s grace? As if by his own will, and without any grace of God, he undertook a good work, and then was divinely helped in the work itself, on account of the virtues of his good will. In that case, grace is rendered as something due, rather than given as a gift — and so grace is no longer grace.^[13]

In everything where anyone does anything in accordance with God, God’s mercy works first. And this our adversaries will not confess, because they choose to be not Catholics, but Pelagians. ^[14]

So it follows that the true interpretation of the saying, ‘It is not of him who wills, nor of him who runs, but of God Who shows mercy,’ is that the entire work [of salvation] belongs to God, Who both makes the human will righteous, and prepares it in this way for His assistance, and then assists it when it is prepared. . . .

Mercy goes before the unwilling person to make him willing; it follows the willing person to make his will effective. Why are we taught to pray for our enemies, who are plainly unwilling to lead a holy life, unless that God may produce willingness in them? ^[15]

But if Pelagius agrees that we receive love from the grace of God, he must not think that any virtues of our own preceded our reception of the gift. For what virtues could we possibly have had, at the time when we did not love God? Indeed, so that we might receive the love that enables us to love, God loved us while as yet we had no love ourselves. This the apostle John most expressly declares: ‘Not that we loved God,’ says he, ‘but that He loved us’ (1 Jn.4:10). And again, ‘We love Him, because He first loved us’ (1 Jn. 4:19). Most excellently and truly spoken!

For we could not have any power to love Him, unless we received it from Him in His first loving us. And what good could we possibly do if we possessed no love? But how could we help doing good if we have love? God’s command may appear sometimes to be kept by those who do not love Him, but only fear Him; but where there is no love, God does not reckon any work as good, nor is there any ‘good work’ rightly so called. For ‘whatever is not from faith is sin’ (Rom.14:23) and ‘faith works by love’ (Gal.5:6). ^[16]

The apostle gives thanks to God for those who have believed — not, clearly, because the gospel has been declared to them, but because they have believed. For he says, ‘in whom you also, having heard the word of the truth, the gospel of your salvation — in whom, having also believed, you were sealed with the Holy Spirit of promise, which is a pledge of our inheritance, for the redemption of God’s own possession, for the praise of his glory. For this cause I also, having heard of the faith in the Lord Jesus and with reference to all the saints, cease not to give thanks for you’ (Ephesians 1:13-16).

Their faith was new and recent, following on the preaching of the gospel to them. When the apostle hears of this faith of theirs, he gives thanks to God for them. If he were to give thanks to someone for what he might think or know that person had not given, it would be called a flattery or a mockery, rather than a giving of thanks. ‘Do not be deceived, for God is not mocked’ (Gal.6:7); for the beginning of faith is also His gift, unless we rightly judge the apostolic giving of thanks to be either mistaken or fallacious!

What then? Does that not stand forth as the beginning of the faith of the Thessalonians, for which the same apostle gives thanks to God when he says, ‘For this reason also we thank God without ceasing, because when you received the word of God which you heard from us, you received it not as the word of men, but as it is in truth, the word of God, which effectually works in you, and which you believed’ (1 Thess.2:13)?

What does Paul gives thanks to God for here? Surely it is a vain and idle thing if He to whom Paul gives thanks did not Himself do the thing! But, since this is not a vain and idle thing, certainly God, to whom Paul gave thanks for this work, Himself did it, so that when they had received the word of God which they heard, they received it not as the word of men, but as it is in truth, the word of God. God, therefore, works in human hearts with that ‘calling according to His purpose’ (Rom.8:28), of which we have spoken a great deal, in order that people should not hear the gospel in vain, but when they hear it, should be converted and believe, receiving it not as the word of men, but as it is in truth, the word of God. ^[17]

Augustine’s teachings against ancient fairism were summarized in the Second Council of Orange (A. D. 529). A thousand years before the Protestant Reformation this ecumenical council decreed the universal condemnation of the Pelagian view as heresy and would also condemn foundational teachings of fairism in our own day. Some excerpts from this text of the ancient Church include:

If anyone says that the grace [salvation] of God can be conferred as a result of human prayer, but that it is not grace itself which makes us pray to God, he contradicts the prophet Isaiah, or the Apostle who says the same thing, “I was found by them that did not seek Me; I appeared openly to them that asked not after Me.” . . .

If anyone says . . . of [saving] faith [and] its beginning and the very desire for faith, by which we believe in Him who justifies the ungodly . . . if anyone says that this belongs to us by nature and not by a gift of grace, that is, by the inspiration of the Holy Spirit amending our will and turning it from unbelief to faith and from godlessness to godliness, it is proof that he is opposed to the teaching of the Apostles. . . . For those who state that faith by which we believe in God is our own, make all who are separated from the Church of Christ in some measure believers.

If anyone says that God has mercy upon us when, apart from His gift, we believe, will, desire, strive, labor, pray, etc. but does not confess that it is by the infusion and inspiration of the Holy Spirit within us that we even have faith, the will, or the strength to do all these things we ought, he contradicts the Apostles. . . .

If anyone affirms that we can form any right opinion or make any right choice which relates to the salvation of eternal life, as is expedient for us, or that we can be saved, that is, assent to the preaching of the gospel through our natural powers without the illumination and inspiration of the Holy Spirit, who makes all men gladly assent to and believe in the truth, he is led astray by a heretical spirit, and does not understand the voice of God. . . . If anyone maintains that he comes through free will, it is proof that he has no place in the true faith. ^[18]

This was what the Christian Church universally believed in the sixth century and the vast majority of the Church’s orthodox Teachers have maintained this view against all forms of Pelagianism, Arminianism, and fairism.

Notice as well in the Canons of Orange that the idea of a prevenient grace is clearly denied. Its references to “the inspiration of the Holy Spirit amending our will and turning it from unbelief to faith,” the “infusion and inspiration of the Holy Spirit within us [by which we] even have faith,” and “the illumination . . . of the Holy Spirit who makes all men gladly assent to and believe in the truth” describes a necessary act of divine grace that far exceeds the fairist theory about prevenient grace.

Finally, we note that the Church at that time not only excommunicated those who believed they were saved ultimately because of something they had done as fairists contend, but the Church at this time seriously questioned the very salvation of such people.

C) Gracism in Early Roman Catholicism

The Council of Orange represented both early Romanism and the essence of the Protestant Reformation. And for several centuries the Church maintained this denial of human ability to have saving faith. Even three hundred years before the Protestant Reformation, the Romanist Thomas Aquinas (1225–1274), the most influential theologian of the Middle Ages, wrote in his Summa Theologica that:

As regards man’s assent to the things which are of faith, we may observe a twofold cause, one of external inducement, such as seeing a miracle, or being persuaded by someone to embrace the faith; neither of which is a sufficient cause, since of those who see the miracle, or hear the same sermon, some believe, and some do not.

Hence we must assert another internal cause, which moves man inwardly to assent to matters of faith. The Pelagians [and modern fairists] held that this cause was nothing else than man’s freewill. . . . But this is false, for since man, by assenting to matters of faith, is raised above his nature, this must needs accrue to him from some supernatural principle moving him inwardly; and this is God. Therefore faith, as regards the assent which is the chief act of faith, is from God moving man inwardly by grace. ^[19]

The clear implication from Aquinas is that if God does not “moving us inwardly” we will not “assent” to the Gospel. But Aquinas believed in more than just some sort of prevenient grace. Commenting on Ephesians 2:8-9, Aquinas contended that:

When the Apostle was recounting above the blessing of God by which we have been freed from sin, he inserted [the thought] that we had been saved by Christ’s grace (2:5). . . . When he next says and that not of yourselves, he clarifies what he had spoken of. He eliminates two errors concerning the first point. The first of these is that, since he had said we are saved by faith, anyone can hold the opinion that faith itself originates within ourselves and that to believe is determined by our own wishes. Therefore to abolish this he states and that not of yourselves.

Free will is inadequate for the act of faith since the contents of faith are above human reason. . . . That a man should believe, therefore, cannot occur from himself unless God gives it . . . For this reason he adds for it is the gift of God, namely, faith itself. “For you have been granted, for the sake of Christ, not only to believe in him, but also to suffer for him” (Phil 1:29).

The second error he rejects is that anyone can believe that faith is given by God to us on the merit of our preceding actions. To exclude this he adds Not of preceding works that we merited at one time to be saved; for this is the grace, as was mentioned above, and according to Romans 11(6): “If by grace, it is not now by works; otherwise grace is no more grace.”

He follows with the reason why God saves man by faith without any preceding merits, that no man may glory in himself but refer all the glory to God. . . . “That no flesh should glory in his sight. It is due to him that you are in Christ Jesus, who became for us wisdom from God, justice, sanctification and redemption” (1 Cor 1:29-30).

Next (2:10), he clarifies what he had said regarding grace. Concerning this he does two things: First, he clarifies the infusion of grace. Secondly, he declares the predestination of grace (2:10b). There are two essential characteristics of grace, they have already been spoken of. The first of these is that what exists through grace is not present in man through himself or by himself, but from the gift of God. In reference to this he states For we are his workmanship, whatever good we possess is not from ourselves but from the action of God. . . .

The second essential characteristic of grace is that it is not from previous works; this is expressed when he adds created. To create anything is to produce it from nothing; hence, when anyone is justified without preceding merits, he can be said to have been created as though made from nothing. This creative action of justification occurs through the power of Christ communicating the Holy Spirit. On this account he adds in Christ Jesus, that is, through Christ Jesus. “For [in Christ Jesus] neither circumcision nor uncircumcision means anything, but a new creation” (Gal. 6:15). ^[20]

Even the Roman Catholic Aquinas believed what fairists deny: saving faith is a gift given by God, not a choice humans make.

His view remained the predominant Romanist view for several centuries. Thomas Stapleton (1535-1598), “the leading English Catholic theologian of the Elizabethan era,” ^[21] wrote, “[I]t is impossible to produce any act of faith, or to believe with faith rightly so called, without special grace, and the divine infusion of the gift of faith.” ^[22]

Likewise, Melchior Cano (1509-1560), who, “has been called the father of theological method in the post-Reformation Catholic tradition,” ^[23] wrote along the same lines:

This is firmly to be held, that human authority and all the motives before mentioned, or any other which may be used by him who proposeth the object of faith to be believed, are not sufficient causes of believing as we are obliged to believe; but there is, moreover, necessary an internal efficient cause moving us to believe, which is the especial help or aid of God. . . .

Wherefore, all external human persuasions or arguments are not sufficient causes of faith, however the things of faith may be sufficiently proposed by men; there is, moreover, necessary an internal cause, that is, a certain divine light, inciting to believe, or certain internal eyes to see, given us by the grace of God. ^[24]

What these Roman Catholic theologians referred to as the “divine infusion of the gift of faith,” the “internal cause moving us to believe,” and “divine light inciting to believe or certain internal eyes to see, given by the grace of God,” was much more than some prevenient grace that most modern Romanist theologians espouse with fairists today. Nonetheless, even when these Romanist theologians spoke, they were ignored, and the biblical view of the foremost theologian of Romanism, Thomas Aquinas, was lost as well. It was only regained by the Protestant Reformation.

D) Gracism in the Protestant Reformation: Luther, Calvin, & Tyndale

Martin Luther (1483-1546) wrote what he considered to be his most important theological work, The Bondage of the Will, on the very issue of whether regeneration was required before saving faith, repentance, or any saving act could occur. His counterpart Erasmus of Rotterdam (1466-1536) insisted humans can do what is necessary for salvation before regeneration. We get an idea of the unbiblical nature of the fairism of Erasmus when we note that, while his previous writings had been banned by the Roman Catholic Church, his Dissertation on the Freedom of the Will earned him nothing but high praise from its officials. Do modern fairists really then want to side with Erasmus and against Luther?

The respected Reformed theologian J. I. Packer summarizes the debate between Erasmus and Luther:

Erasmus thinks of internal grace as the mere strengthening of a will . . . to help it do better [i.e. repent, believe, etc.]; Luther thinks of it as a total renewal of corrupt nature by the Holy Spirit, which takes place when God ‘calls’ a man to faith in Jesus Christ and which makes him capable of good works for the first time in his life. ^[25]

Accordingly, while the fairist Erasmus claimed humans possessed a prevenient grace enabling them to respond in a saving way to the Gospel, Luther answered with a resounding “No!” and felt to believe in such a thing was a dangerous attack on the very foundation of salvation by God’s grace alone instead of human works. He described the fairist well when he said he is “persuaded that he can make even the smallest contribution to his salvation.” ^[26] Likewise, Luther wrote in The Bondage of the Will:

[M]an, before he is renewed into the new creation of the Spirit’s kingdom, does and endeavors nothing to prepare himself for that new creation and kingdom. ^[27]

[T]he very plain testimony of Paul [is] that grace is given freely to the undeserving and utterly unworthy, and is not attained by any of the efforts, endeavors, or works, small or great, of even the best and most upright men who seek and follow after righteousness with flaming zeal. . . .

I could wish that the guardians of ‘free will’ [i.e. fairists] would be taught . . . to recognize that when they assert ‘free will’ [or prevenient grace enabling a “free will”] they are denying Christ. . . . So utterly does grace refuse to allow any particle or power of ‘free will’ to stand beside it! ^[28]

We become sons of God by a power divinely given us—not by any power of “free will” inherent in us! . . . What is hereby attributed to man’s own decision and free will? What indeed is left but nothing! Since the source of grace is the predestinating purpose of God, then it comes by necessity, and not by any effort or endeavor on our part. ^[29]

Elsewhere the founder of the Reformation of gracism wrote:

Although this matter [of unconditional election] is very hard for the “prudence of the flesh,” which is made even more indignant by it and brought even to the point of blasphemy, because here it is strangled to death and reduced to absolutely nothing, man understands that salvation comes in no way from something working in himself, but only from outside himself, namely, from God, who elects. But those who have the “prudence of the Spirit” delight in this subject with ineffable pleasure. ^[30]

Likewise, Luther wrote in his Small Catechism:

I believe that it is not of my own reason or my own strength that I believe in Jesus Christ my Lord. It is the Holy Spirit that by the Gospel has called me, with his gifts has enlightened me, through genuine faith has sanctified and sustained me, just as he calls, gathers together, enlightens, sanctifies and sustains, by Jesus Christ, in true and proper faith, all Christendom. ^[31]

Accordingly, the Lutheran Formula of Concord (1577) stated:

The Holy Scriptures ascribe conversion, faith in Christ, regeneration, renewal, and everything that belongs to its real beginning and completion in no way to the human powers of the natural free will, be it entirely or one-half or the least and tiniest part, but altogether and alone to the divine operation and the Holy Spirit. ^[32]

As one expert on Luther put it:

Were this not so, were faith itself not the gift of the Spirit, it would be a ‘work’, an achievement of our own-something quite the opposite of what Luther understood it to be, and implying a radical inversion of his doctrine of justification by faith. To be justified by faith is to be justified solely by the free grace of God; it is to depend on Christ alone for salvation; it is therefore something that only God can perform, realize, and make effective.

Certainly Protestantism has by no means always remembered this fundamental message of Luther’s. . . . Protestantism has often enough been inclined to substitute the individual’s ‘act’ or ‘decision’ of faith, propounding its own fake Trinity of: ‘God, Jesus, and my faith.’ This was far from Luther’s intention. ^[33]

J. I. Packer has noted:

Luther, believing that any kind of effort or contribution man may attempt to make towards his own salvation is works-righteousness, and therefore under condemnation, preferred the thorough-going exegesis of Augustine, who magnifies the grace of God. ^[34]

Nor did Luther believe like so many today that this was a minor issue. He wrote to Erasmus:

It is not irreligious, idle, or superfluous, but in the highest degree wholesome and necessary, for a Christian to know whether or not his will has anything to do in matters pertaining to salvation. Indeed, let me tell you, this is the hinge on which our discussion turns, the crucial issue between us; our aim is, simply, to investigate what ability ‘free-will’ has, in what respect it is the subject of Divine action and how it stands related to the grace of God. If we know nothing of these things, we shall know nothing whatsoever of Christ. . . .

We need, therefore, to have in mind a clear-cut distinction between God’s power and ours, and God’s work and ours. . . . So, you see, this point is a further item in any complete summary of Christianity. Self-knowledge, and the knowledge and glory of God, are bound up with it. Which means, my dear Erasmus, that it is simply intolerable of you to call the knowledge of it irreligious, idle, and vain. ^[35]

Nevertheless, Jacobus Arminius (1560-1609), on the heels of the Reformation, vehemently denied its foundational tenets. His claims included the idea that unregenerated humans are capable of saving faith and it is not the work of God alone. Accordingly, the Protestant scholar Geoffrey Bromiley writes in the International Standard Bible Encyclopedia:

Arminianism was responsible for a dangerous development with its implication that the free response of faith is the last stone, as it were, which we ourselves place in the edifice of salvation. ^[36]

Indeed, unlike Arminius, those faithful to the doctrines of the Protestant Reformation have maintained Luther’s view, which we believe was the Apostle Paul’s view. Accordingly, English scholar William Temple (1555-1637) famously wrote concerning our salvation: “All is of God; the only thing of my very own which I contribute to my redemption is the sin from which I need to be redeemed.” ^[37]

Likewise, the Christian philosopher Blaise Pascal (1623-1662) wrote of God:

He inclines their heart to believe. Men will never believe with a saving and real faith, unless God inclines their heart; and they will believe as soon as He inclines it. . . . [God says] “Console yourself, you would not seek Me, if you had not found Me.” ^[38]

The highly respected Puritan theologian John Owen (1616-1683) contended that:

[There] is a natural impotence, through the depravity of the faculties of the mind, or understanding, whereby a natural man is absolutely unable, without a special renovation of the Holy Ghost, to discern spiritual things in a saving manner. ^[39]

John Bunyan, the author of Pilgrim’s Progress wrote:

Faith is a fruit, work, or gift of the Spirit of God, whereby a poor soul is enabled through the mighty operation of God, in a sense of its sins and wretched estate to lay hold on the righteousness, blood, death, resurrection, ascension, intercession, and coming again of the Son of God which was crucified without the gates of Jerusalem, for eternal life. . . .

Without the Spirit man is so infirm that he cannot, with all other means whatsoever, be enabled to think one right saving thought of God, of Christ, or of his blessed things. ^[40]

Along the same lines, the popular Puritan Bible scholar, Matthew Henry (1662-1714) wrote in direct denial to what Charles Finney would promote: “Our faith, our conversion, and our eternal salvation, are not the mere product of any natural abilities.” ^[41]

Obviously, the Roman Catholic Church at the time responded strongly to Luther’s gracism. Unfortunately, their response is identical to how modern fairism has responded to gracism as well. Along these lines, the rightly respected Cardinal Avery Dulles (1918-2008), a foremost theologian of modern Romanism has written:

In answer to what were understood as Protestant denials of the role of free will, the Council of Trent (1545-1563) affirmed that, while faith is impossible without supernatural assistance, grace does not bring about the saving act of faith without the free consent of those who receive it [gracist agree, but believe the unconditional regeneration of a person changes their will and gives them saving faith]. Thus human freedom, although weakened by the Fall, is not extinguished (Session 6, chap. 1, DS 152 1). It remains in sufficient measure for the adult believer to submit willingly to the grace-given inclination to believe the truth of God’s promises in Christ (chaps. 5 and 6, DS 1525-26).

According to the Council, therefore, the will in coming to faith is indeed moved by God, but God does not move it coercively, as irrational creatures are moved, but freely, in such a way that it makes its own contribution [a work!]. The Council did not attempt to solve the theoretical questions that can arise in harmonizing the sovereign efficacy of God’s grace with the human capacity to refuse it. ^[42]

And modern fairism promotes the very same things. They too, against the Protestant Reformers, and in agreement with the Roman Catholic Church, believe that unregenerated humans are capable of choosing God, and if they do, it is ultimately because of a work they choose, not a work God does. And modern fairism likewise glories in their refusal to reconcile the contradiction they create when they assert both the supremacy of God’s sovereign grace and man’s free will.

Luther’s Reformation counterpart in England, William Tyndale (1494-1536), believed the same and wrote:

Many have a certain imagination of [saving] faith. They think no farther than that faith is a thing which is in their own power to have, as do other natural works which men do. . . . But the right faith does not spring from man’s fantasy, neither is it in any man’s power to obtain it; but it is altogether the pure gift of God without deserving and merits, yea, without or seeking for it, even faith in God’s gift and grace. . . . [Saving] Faith roots herself in the hearts of the elect.

Is it not . . . perverse blindness to teach how a man can do nothing of his own self [for salvation], and yet presumptuously take upon them the greatest and highest work of God, even to make [saving] faith in themselves of their own power, and of their own false imagination and thoughts? Therefore, I say, we must despair of ourselves and pray to God to give us [saving] faith. ^[43]

Of course, John Calvin (1509-1564) was a foundational figure of the Protestant Reformation and a gracist. So much so, that this position has been better known as Calvinism. This wrongly implies that Calvin originated the doctrines of grace. Far from it. In fact, both Augustine and Luther wrote much more about Calvinism than Calvin did. Unfortunately, Calvin has been maligned so much in modern Christianity that for many, Calvinism has become a curse word. We can especially thank Dave Hunt for that most recently. ^[44]

Nonetheless, we will quote Calvin here on the nature of our conversion. He wrote:

Our salvation is not only helped forward by God, but also . . . it is begun, continued and perfected by him, without any contribution of our own. ^[45]

Faith does not proceed from ourselves, but is the fruit of spiritual regeneration. ^[46]

It is indisputable that free will is not sufficient to enable man to do good works, unless he is helped by grace, indeed by special grace, which only the elect receive through regeneration. For I do not tarry over those fanatics who babble that grace is equally and indiscriminately distributed. ^[47]

[Referring to man after the fall] He is so banished from the Kingdom of God that all qualities belonging to the blessed life of the soul have been extinguished in him, until he recovers them through the grace of regeneration. Among these are faith, love of God, charity toward neighbor, zeal for holiness, and for righteousness. All these, since Christ restores them in us, are considered outside of us, and beyond nature; and from this we infer that they were taken away. ^[48]

Indeed the Word of God is like the sun, shining upon all those to whom it is proclaimed, but with no effect among the blind. Now, all of us are blind by nature in this respect. . . . Accordingly, it cannot penetrate into our minds unless the Spirit, as the inner teacher, through his illumination makes entry for it. ^[49]

And we believe that is precisely what the Apostle meant by a salvation that is by God’s grace instead of our works. And this was the view of all the Protestant Reformers.

Accordingly, the Westminster Confession of Faith (1646), the authoritative summary of Protestant Reformation theology, in its section on “Free Will” asserted the virtual universal belief of Protestant Christianity:

Man, by his fall into a state of sin, has wholly lost all ability of will to any spiritual good accompanying salvation: so as, a natural man, being altogether averse from that good, and dead in sin, is not able, by his own strength, to convert himself, or to prepare himself thereunto. ^[50]

Under “Effectual Calling” the Confession states:

All those whom God hath predestinated unto life, and those only, He is pleased, in His appointed time, effectually to call, by His Word and Spirit, out of that state of sin and death, in which they are by nature to grace and salvation, by Jesus Christ; enlightening their minds spiritually and savingly to understand the things of God, taking away their heart of stone, and giving unto them an heart of flesh; renewing their wills, and, by His almighty power, determining them to that which is good, and effectually drawing them to Jesus Christ: yet so, as they come most freely, being made willing by His grace.

This effectual call is of God’s free and special grace alone, not from anything at all foreseen in man, who is altogether passive therein, until, being quickened and renewed by the Holy Spirit, he is thereby enabled to answer this call, and to embrace the grace offered and conveyed in it. ^[51]

Finally under the heading of “Saving Faith” the Westminster Confession says:

“The grace of faith, whereby the elect are enabled to believe to the saving of their souls, is the work of the Spirit of Christ in their hearts.” ^[52]

“The grace of faith” is a great way to summarize the Reformation “solas” of salvation by grace alone through faith alone, understanding that this faith is a grace itself, or salvation is not by grace alone either.

Other doctrinal confessions coming out of the Reformation which denounced fairism and upheld gracism include:

The Baptist Confession of Faith (1689)

The Belgic Confession 
The Canons of Dordt of 1618-19 
The Heidelberg Catechism
Scottish Confession of Faith 1560
The Thirty-nine Articles of Religion of the Anglican Church
Doctrinal Position of the Lutheran Missouri Synod (1932)

E) Gracism in the Great Awakening: Whitefield & Edwards

The recognized founder and predominant Evangelist of the “Great Awakening” revival that swept England and America in the early to mid 1700’s was George Whitefield (1704-1770), one of the most fruitful Evangelists in all of Church history. He was a staunch gracist. When asked by Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790) why he made so much of unconditional election to salvation in his evangelistic preaching, Whitefield responded:

This is one reason, among many others, why I admire the doctrine of election, and am convinced that it should have a place in the gospel ministry, and should be insisted on with great faithfulness and care. . . . I shall only say, it is the doctrine of election that mostly presses me to abound in good works. This makes me preach with comfort, because I know that my salvation does not depend upon my free will, but the Lord makes me willing in the day of His power; and can make use of me to bring some of His elect home, when and where He pleases. ^[53]

Elsewhere in Whitefield’s writings we read:

I embrace the Calvinistic scheme, not because of Calvin, but Jesus Christ has taught it to me. ^[54]

The doctrines of our election, and free justification in Christ Jesus are daily more and more pressed upon my heart. I hope [we will] most debase man and exalt the Lord Jesus. Nothing but the doctrines of the Reformation can do this.

All others leave freewill in man and make him, in part at least, a Savior to himself. My soul . . . do not come near those who teach such things . . . I know Christ is all in all. Man is nothing: he hath a free will to go to hell, but none to go to heaven, till God worketh in him to will and to do of His good pleasure.

Oh the excellency of the doctrine of election . . . I am persuaded, till a man comes to believe and feel these important truths, he cannot come out of himself. . . . Was there any fitness forseen in us, except a fitness for damnation? I believe not. ^[55]

Whitefield’s biographer, Arnold Dallimore, writes regarding Whitefield’s gracist beliefs:

He had gradually come to these convictions over the period of the four years following his conversion. He possessed a very real understanding of them, not as an abstract system of thought, but as the teachings of the Scriptures and as the basic principles of his daily Christian life. . . .

These doctrines had indeed become ‘bone of his bone and flesh of his flesh’. ‘I am more and more convinced’, he asserted, ‘that they are the truths of God; they agree with the written Word, and with the experience of all the saints in all ages’ . . .

Though he sometimes used the word Calvinism, he did not give great place to it. He made much more of the fact that the views he held were those he had discovered in the Bible and he more frequently referred to them as the doctrines of grace. . . .

[H]e saw them to be so essential to the whole Christian revelation, he had no choice but to preach them. ‘Henceforth, I hope I shall speak boldly and plainly,’ he wrote, ‘and not fail to declare the whole counsel of God.’ This might entail conflict with some of his dearest friends [i.e. Wesley], but he was quick to assert that his part therein would be only on the basis of presenting the Scriptures: ‘Election, free grace, free justification . . . I intend to exalt and contend for more and more; not with carnal weapons-that be far from me-but with the sword of the Spirit, the Word of God! No sword like that! ^[56]

While George Whitfield was the founder and foremost Evangelist of the Great Awakening, Jonathan Edwards (1703-1758) was its foremost Teacher. Of course, he too, like the vast majority of his fellow preachers in America at the time, were committed gracists. At the very least, his most famous sermon, “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God,” should suggest that Edwards had little regard for the fairist doctrine of some sort of universal, accepting love of God. And historians agree that such sermons were the norm of the greatest evangelistic revival America has ever experienced.

In fact, virtually all of the Christians who founded America and started churches for its first 100 years were gracists. Theologian John Gerstner (1914-1996) notes:

The characteristic writings of the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries were clearly Calvinistic. . . . Harvard’s Vice President, Samuel Willard, lectured monthly in Boston on Westminster’s Shorter Catechism, which lectures were later published in the first systematic theology printed in the Colonies. ^[57]

Accordingly, Cotton Mather (1663-1728), the most influential Evangelical of the early eighteenth century in America wrote:

There is no need of reporting what is the Faith professed by the churches of New England; for everyone knows, that they perfectly adhere to the Confession of Faith, published by the Assembly of Divines at Westminster, and afterwards renewed by the Synod at the Savoy. ^[58]

However, as spirituality waned in the colonies, so did doctrinal integrity to the teachings of the Protestant Reformation. Like Luther, Jonathan Edwards confronted men who attempted to water down salvation by God’s grace alone by asserting that humans had been given some ability to ultimately choose their own destiny. Edwards wrote and preached much against such fairism and many historians believe that his defense of traditional, orthodox gracism was the theological foundation of the Great Awakening in America.

Edwards’ biographer, Ian Murray writes:

He learned by experience, as others had done before him, that while those who have little awareness of the real nature of sin may assert man’s ability to repent and believe, to hate sin and love God, those who know the true condition of human nature can find comfort only in the knowledge that God saves by his sovereign good pleasure and for the praise of the glory of his grace.

Spiritual experience and sound theology go together. Accordingly, the Reformers, and the Puritans after them, had attributed opposition to the doctrines or grace as evidence of spiritual ignorance. “The Papist”, wrote William Perkins, “ascribes his conversion not wholly to grace, but partly to grace, and partly to nature, or the strength of a man’s will helped by grace.” He did so because he lacked a true knowledge of sin.

This explanation of the reason why the ‘Calvinistic’ aspect of biblical theology is so commonly unwelcome to men harmonizes with the evidence of Edwards’ own personal history. In his youth, he tells us, he had no sympathy at all with the idea that God appoints men to salvation:

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

Following his conversion he found his objections silenced, and he came to a new conviction upon the subject:

‘But I have often, since that first conviction, had quite another kind of sense of God’s sovereignty than I had then. I have often since had not only a conviction, but a delightful conviction. The doctrine has very often appeared exceeding pleasant, bright and sweet. Absolute sovereignty is what l love to ascribe to God. But my first conviction was not so.’ ^[59]

Murray goes on to explain:

The high degree of importance which Edwards came to attach to Calvinistic belief was to have far-reaching consequences for his whole ministry. In the first place, it affected his over-all assessment of the need of the Church in the eighteenth century. A hundred years earlier, the Puritans had argued that Arminianism – that is to say the belief that God loves all men equally, and that the reception of the benefits of Christ’s redemption depends upon the right use of man’s free-will- was a serious distortion of the gospel and that it would necessarily lead to a superficial, worldly Christianity.

But before the end of the seventeenth century a noticeable change of attitude over this controversy had occurred in England. It was not so much that the descendants of the Puritans wished to sanction the distinctive tenets of Arminianism; they simply doubted whether the whole subject was worthy of continued attention. Reflecting on the new mood John Owen had said in a fast-day sermon in London in 1676:

Little did I think I should ever have lived in this world to find the minds of professors grown altogether indifferent as to the doctrine of God’s eternal election, the sovereign efficacy of grace in the conversion of sinners, justification by the imputation of the righteousness of Christ; but many are, as to all these things, grown to an indifferency; they know not whether they are so or not. I bless God I know something of the former generation, when professors would not hear of these things without the highest detestation; and now high professors begin to be leaders in it; and it is too much among the best of us. We are not so much concerned for the truth as our forefathers; I wish I could say we were as holy.

Notwithstanding such warnings, indefiniteness with respect to strict Calvinism became the new order. By Edwards’ day the profession of orthodoxy was still general in New England–late as 1726 Cotton Mather believed there was no Arminian minister in Boston–but the attitude which Owen reprobated had taken firm hold, and open opposition to the old theology was not far away. There were too many ministers of the spirit of Benjamin Wadsworth, the ultra-conciliatory president of Harvard, and of Edward Wigglesworth, who was in ‘no ways rigid in his attachment to any scheme.’ . . .

By the 1730’s Edwards was in open disagreement with the judgment of such temperate brethren. ‘There is very little appearance of zeal for the mysterious and spiritual doctrines of Christianity’, he wrote in 1739, and this he took to be a sure sign of the low state of religion. Moreover, he saw, as Owen before him, that Christianity itself could not long be upheld if concessions were made to accommodate objections to Calvinism.

The danger from Arminianism lay not simply in a few particular errors but in its whole tendency. The first indication that Edwards’ convictions on this issue were going to be heard far beyond Northampton came in 1731. In that year, at the age of twenty-eight, he had the distinction of being invited to give the Public Lecture in Boston on July 8. We may be sure that he preached to a packed congregation and in the presence of not a few of the leading ministers of Massachusetts.

The text he chose was I Corinthians 1.29-31, ‘That no flesh should glory in his presence … ‘ and the doctrine to be expounded was set out in the words, ‘God is glorified in the work of redemption in this, that there appears in it so absolute and universal a dependence of the redeemed on God for all their good.’ It was the full-orbed old theology, spiritually presented, powerfully urged and, at the close, applied against ‘those doctrines and schemes of divinity that are in any respect opposite to such an absolute and universal dependence on God.’

We are dependent upon God, he argued, not only for redemption itself but for our faith in the Redeemer, not only for the gift of his Son but for the Holy Ghost for our conversion. Man is naturally exceeding prone to exalt himself and depend on his own power or goodness. . . . [L]et him give God all the glory who alone makes him to differ from the worst of men in this world, or the most miserable of the damned in hell. ^[60]

Edwards here reflected the historic view of the Christian church, while fairism contends that what “makes” us “differ” from those “damned in hell” is not “God . . . alone” but ultimately a virtuous work on our part.

Accordingly, Murray goes on to explain:

Herein lies Edwards’ enduring strength. He was not an originator. He proposes no re-formulation of the doctrine and creed of Protestant Churches. . . . He was content with the theology of the Westminster Confession . . . . Had Edwards not occupied the role of the foremost theologian of his century, the Christianity which was then revived might have been estranged from the Faith of the Reformers and Puritans. . . .

There were, of course, those who conceived the needs of the eighteenth century to include the need for revision of traditional orthodoxy. They included such latitudinarian divines as Whitby, Warburton and Taylor, on the one hand, and such an inconsistent evangelical as John Wesley on the other. Wesley’s respect for Edwards, as we have seen, did not include respect for his theology, and he attempted to make Methodism a movement for doctrinal change.

On this subject, the anonymous author of an article entitled ‘Evangelism of the Eighteenth Century’ writes: ‘When God wants men for a special exigency or a particular field, he brings them forward amply qualified for the work committed to their charge. These men [founders of Methodism] were not fitted either by nature or culture, or experience, for doctrinal reformers. And hence, we believe that Methodism was never commissioned for this specific work. We must be pardoned for any seeming want of charity, in declaring our belief that it travelled out of its legitimate sphere, when it undertook the work of reforming the creed of Christendom. Vast, far-reaching, and glorious, as have been the results of the Methodist movement, who shall tell us that they would not have been far greater and more glorious, had there been a strict and unwavering adherence to the doctrines so glowingly sounded forth by Whitefield, and others of their most distinguished founders?

Given the success attending Methodist preaching, it was to be Wesley’s type of Arminianism (and its more serious variant initiated by C. G. Finney) which posed the greater temptation to evangelical Christianity. The weakness of biblical evidence for the teaching which Wesley wished to substitute was half-hidden behind a charge that Calvinistic belief and evangelism are incompatible. ‘Calvinism has been the greatest hindrance of the work of God’, was Wesley’s repeated assertion.

While George Whitefield’s ministry was a powerful counter to this charge, in the long term it was Edwards’ Works which were to be the more formidable and permanent obstacle to the success of Wesley’s argument. No book did more to create concern for wider missionary endeavor than Edwards’ Life of Brainerd. ^[61]

In fact, William Carey (1761-1834), considered the “father of modern missions” was an avowed Calvinist, and carried Edwards’ writings with him to India. ^[62]

Elsewhere Edwards wrote:

We are dependent on God’s power through every step of our redemption. We are dependent on the power of God to convert us, and give faith in Jesus Christ, and the new nature. It is a work of creation.

We are dependent on God, not only for redemption itself but for our faith in the Redeemer; not only for the gift of His Son but for the Holy Ghost for our conversion. ^[63]

In fact, when commenting on Peter Van Mastricht’s (1630-1706) defense of monergistic salvation against fairism, Arminianism, and synergism in his book, Treatise on Regeneration, Edwards said of it: This book is much better than any other book in the world, excepting the Bible, in my opinion.” ^[64]

Edwards’ most detailed writing against fairism was entitled The Freedom of the Will, published in 1754 in which he desired to prove:

The Calvinist truth as clearly revealed in the holy scriptures . . . ” [T]he Calvinistic doctrine of the total depravity and corruption of man’s nature, whereby his heart is wholly under the power of sin, and he is utterly unable, without the interposition of sovereign grace, savingly to love God, believe in Christ, or do anything that is truly good and acceptable in God’s sight. ^[65]

James Montgomery Boice summarizes a main point in Edwards’ Freedom of the Will when he writes:

Jonathan Edwards . . . said that the problem is not with the will itself, since the will is simply the mind choosing what the mind deems best. The problem is with man’s moral nature, which is opposed to God, and with the sinful “motives” that flow from that corrupt nature. Edwards declared that the will is always free; we always choose what we judge best in a given situation. But as sinners we always judge wrongly. We think God undesirable. Hence, we always resist him and reject the gospel. ^[66]

Many scholars believe that Edwards’ Freedom of the Will is the most important argument against fairism ever published in America. Professors Joel Beeke and Randall Pedersen explain:

Edwards argues that only the regenerate person can truly choose the transcendent God; that choice can be made only through a disposition that God infuses in regeneration. In this, Edwards rejected the materialism of the British philosophers along with the utilitarianism of free-will advocates. Logically, Edwards succeeds in making Arminianism an impossibility. ^[67]

Elsewhere, Edwards recognized that God’s work of salvation is done in and through us, but it is still completely his work:

In saving grace we are not merely passive, nor yet does God do some, and we do the rest. But God does all, and we do all. God produces all, and we act all. For that is what he produces, viz., our own acts. God is the only proper author and fountain; we only are the proper actors. ^[68]

Two highly respected historians of the Great Awakening in America, Alan Heimert and Perry Miller, relate that many years earlier, Edwards published: “five ‘Discourses on Various Important Subjects’ delivered by Edwards at the time of the revival.” ^[69] Professors Heimert and Perry add:

The most important [Discourse], to Edwards’ mind, was that on the “great Reformation doctrine” of justification by faith. It was by recalling his people to this “principal hinge” of Protestantism, Edwards contended, that the spread of Arminianism was resisted. ^[70]

Excerpts from this “Discourse” are worth the following lengthy quotation. Edwards wrote:

I know there are many that make as though this controversy [between gracism and fairism] was of no great importance; that it is chiefly a matter of nice speculation, depending on certain subtle distinctions, which many that make use of them do not understand themselves; and that the difference is not of such consequence as to be worth the being zealous about; and that more hurt is done by raising disputes about it than good. . . .

This I think to be of great importance, at least in application to ourselves; and that for the following reasons. The Scripture treats of this doctrine, as a doctrine of very great importance. That there is a certain doctrine of justification by faith, in opposition to justification by the works of the law, that the Apostle Paul insists upon as of the greatest importance, none will deny; because there is nothing in the Bible more apparent. The apostle, under the infallible conduct of the Spirit of God, thought it worth his most strenuous and zealous disputing about and defending.

He speaks of the contrary doctrine as fatal and ruinous to the souls of men . . . He speaks of it as subversive of the gospel of Christ, and calls it another gospel, and says concerning it, if any one, “though an angel from heaven, preach it, let him be accursed.”

The adverse scheme [fairism, Arminianism, synergism] lays another foundation of man’s salvation than God hath laid. . . . It takes away Christ out of the place of the bottom stone, and puts in men’s own virtue in the room of him so that Christ himself in the affair of distinguishing, actual salvation, is laid upon this foundation.

And the foundation being so different, I leave it to everyone to judge whether the difference between the two schemes consists only in punctilios of small consequence. The foundations being contrary, makes the whole scheme exceeding diverse and opposite; the one is a gospel scheme, the other a legal one. . . .

I am sensible the divines of that side [i.e. fairism, Arminianism, synergism] entirely disclaim the Popish [Roman Catholic] doctrine of merit; and are free to speak of our utter unworthiness, and the great imperfection of all our services; but after all, it is our virtue [e.g. humility, repentance, fear of God, etc.], imperfect as it is, that recommends men to God, by which good men [at least better than those who do not get saved] come to have a saving interest in Christ, and God’s favor, rather than others; and these things are bestowed in testimony of God’s respect to their goodness [i.e. humility, repentance, fear of God, etc.]. So that whether they [fairists] will allow the term “merit” or no, yet they hold, that we are accepted by our own merit. . . .

It is no gospel at all; it is law; it is no covenant of grace, but of works: it is not an evangelical, but a legal doctrine. The contrary scheme of justification [i.e. fairism] derogates much from the honor of God and the Mediator. I have already shown how it diminishes the glory of the Mediator, in ascribing that to man’s virtue and goodness [i.e. humility, repentance, fear of God], which belongs alone to his worthiness and righteousness. . .

It has also been already shown how it diminishes the glory of divine grace (which is the attribute God hath especially set himself to glorify in the work of redemption); and so that it greatly diminishes the obligation to gratitude in the sinner that is saved; yea, that in the sense of the apostle, it makes void the distinguishing grace of the gospel. . . .

It diminishes the glory of the grace of God and the Redeemer, and proportionably magnifies man; it makes him something before God when indeed he is nothing; it makes the goodness of fallen man to be something, which I have shown is nothing.

I know that those we oppose do acknowledge that the price is very disproportionate to the benefit bestowed; and say, that God’s grace is wonderfully manifested in accepting so little virtue [i.e. humility, repentance, fear of God], and bestowing so glorious a reward for such imperfect righteousness. But seeing we are such infinitely sinful and abominable creatures in God’s sight, and by our infinite guilt have brought ourselves into such wretched and deplorable circumstances, and all our righteousnesses are nothing, and ten thousand times worse than nothing (if God looks upon them as they be in themselves), is it not immensely more worthy of the infinite majesty and glory of God to deliver and make happy such poor, filthy worms,
such wretched vagabonds and captives, without any money or price [contribution] of theirs, or any manner of expectation of any excellency or virtue in them, in any wise to recommend them?

Will it not betray a foolish, exalting opinion of ourselves, and a mean one of God, to have a thought of offering anything of ours, to recommend us to the favor of being brought from wallowing like filthy swine, in the mire of our sins, and from the enmity and misery of devils in the lowest hell, to the state of God’s dear children, in the everlasting arms of his love, in heavenly glory; or to imagine that that is the constitution of God, that we should bring our filthy rags, and offer them to him as the price of this”? ^[71]

Anyone wishing to promote fairism in even its most subtle shades, needs to refute Jonathan Edwards.

F) The Fairism of John Wesley

Wesley first learned the Gospel through the Moravians who were a very evangelistic and missions oriented Christian movement at the time, ^[72] and also committed to gracism. ^[73] Unfortunately, the gracist truths that led Wesley to Christ were not good enough for him later. And because the evangelistic Moravians had taught him these things, and were later instrumental in his conversion and early discipleship, he should never have claimed, as he later did, that “Calvinism has been the greatest hindrance of the work of God.” This wasn’t even true in his own life.

At a point in time before John Wesley (1703-1791) claimed conversion, but had been exposed to the Gospel in America by Moravian missionaries, he wrote:

This then have I learned in the ends of the earth [America]—that I am ‘fallen short of the glory of God’; that my whole heart is ‘altogether corrupt and abominable’ . . . . having nothing in or of myself to plead, I have no hope but . . . to be found in Him, not having my own righteousness, but that which is through the faith of Christ, the righteousness that is of God by faith. ^[74]

Above, Wesley embraces a belief that his “whole heart is corrupt” (i.e. total depravity), that there was “nothing in or of” himself, including apparently humility, repentance, etc. that would gain him salvation, and that the faith he needed to be saved was “of Christ” as in coming from Him, not a faith in Christ coming from Wesley. Obviously, this is precisely what the gracist Moravians had taught him.

Elsewhere, in his journals at this time, he writes extensively about the fact that he truly desires Christ’s forgiveness, but that Christ must grant him saving faith in that forgiveness. ^[75] He desperately wants to believe, but knows it is a belief that must be granted him.

Then, John tells us that he went to a meeting in which a man was reading Martin Luther’s preface to Romans. This obviously reflected the same theology of salvation that the Moravians had taught him, including Luther’s statement in the preface: “Faith is a work of God in us, which changes us and brings us to birth anew from God (cf. John 1). ^[76] It was during the reading of this writing from Luther that Wesley says, “I felt my heart strangely warmed,” which would appear to be a description of regeneration. He goes on to describe that it was at this point that real saving faith was experienced by him.

Immediately after this experience he visited his brother Charles who reported, “Towards ten my brother was brought in triumph by a troop of our friends, and he declared, ‘I believe’!” ^[77] Of course, he had “believed” in Christ for many years, and had sought a deeper faith “through Christ” ^[78] for many months to no avail. At this point he simply describes it as something happening to him, rather than something he could or did do. When John told his brother Charles “I believe!” he knew at that time that it was a supernatural saving belief that was the gift and work of the Holy Spirit. Unfortunately, he later forgot that and would preach and print against such historical faiths of the Protestant Reformation.

While John Wesley was certainly one of the most prolific preachers in the history of the Church, he has been thought to be a bad doctrinal Teacher. He is a good example of the consistent errors that have occurred when gifted evangelists attempt to be theologians. Accordingly, his theological differences with his Reformation counterparts are well known.

When George Whitefield decided to minister in America, he needed to choose a man to replace him in England. “He was holding nearly thirty meetings a week with audiences which totaled forty or fifty thousand. . . . Whoever succeeded him would have abundant opportunity to organize it in permanent form.” ^[79] After considering at least three other candidates who either refused or were unavailable, “Whitefield’s thoughts turned to John Wesley” because of his “invincible spirit.” ^[80] Whitefield wrote to him, “You must come and water what I have planted.” ^[81]

Throughout his life, Wesley had two methods by which he sought God’s will: randomly opening the Bible and casting lots. In this decision he performed the former method, “four times . . . and each time the verse lighted upon referred to death or suffering.” ^[82]

“Faced with so plain an indication that to accept Whitefield’s invitation would mean his demise, Wesley said: ‘This I was not at all forward to do; and perhaps a little less because of the remarkable Scriptures that offered as often as we inquired touching the consequence of this removal’”. Even his brother Charles had “appealed to the oracles of God” in the same manner and lighted upon another verse concerning death. Nevertheless, the Wesley’s and their companions decided to determine God’s will in the matter by casting a lot, and John writes, “And by this it was determined I should go.” As Whitefield’s biographer notes: “All these forebodings were entirely unnecessary. In going to Bristol [to preach], instead of approaching his death, John Wesley was entering into the labor of his life.” ^[83]

Wesley’s spiritual immaturity should not be surprising at this point as Dallimore reports that at the time of Whitfield’s invitation: “It was but ten months from his Aldersgate Street [conversion] experience and only eleven weeks had elapsed since his assertion, “That I am not a Christian I as assuredly know as that Jesus is the Christ.’” ^[84] Nevertheless, Wesley began to preach before Whitefield’s crowds and gained a following for himself.

Nevertheless, Whitefield “was sorely troubled” when his disciple, John Wesley (1703-1791) began to teach against the fundamentals of the Protestant Reformation regarding the nature of saving faith. ^[85] Wesley claimed that God had told him through the casting of lots to preach and print against gracism. Whitefield and other leaders of the Great Awakening were also obviously troubled when Wesley began to declare his perfectionism doctrine and also claimed that a true Christian could lose their salvation. Accordingly, Count Zinzendorf (1700-1760), leader of the Moravians, who had been so influential in Wesley’s conversion and early discipleship, called him, “a false teacher and a deceiver of souls.” ^[86]

John Wesley’s departure from historic Protestant doctrine was one of the most distressing circumstances in Whitefield’s life. Nonetheless, he chose to pursue harmony for the sake of the revival he was leading. When a friend criticized him for not confronting Wesley’s fairism more strenuously, Whitefield replied:

Though I am a strenuous defender of the righteousness of Christ, and utterly detest Arminian principles, yet I know that God gave me the Holy Ghost before I was clear in either as to head-knowledge; and therefore, dear Sir, I am the more moderate to people who are not clear, supposing I see the divine image stamped upon their hearts.

Mr. W[esley], Mr. L[aw] &c[ompany] take to be holy men of God, though they think far widely from me, and from each other in some particular branches of doctrine. . . . I shall approve and join with all who are good in every sect, and cast a mantle of love over all that are bad, so far as is consistent with a good conscience. This I can do without compromising; nay I should defile my conscience if I did otherwise. ^[87]

May God give us grace to follow Whitefield’s example of holding on to both truth and grace.

G) The Gracism of Charles Spurgeon

Very, very few people have witnessed more salvations under their preaching than Charles Spurgeon (1834-1892). Accordingly, he wrote against the heretical idea of “hyper-Calvinism” which contended that the Gospel should not be preached at all. Nevertheless, Spurgeon was proud to claim he was a Calvinist and did so consistently. ­­­­­­^[88]

There are, of course, many, many examples of Spurgeon preaching on the nature of human spiritual inability and saving faith. A succinct and memorably statement was:

If there be but one stitch in the celestial garment of our righteousness which we ourselves are to put in, we are lost. From top to bottom this salvation is of the Lord. ^[89]

He, of course, had even our saving faith in mind. Likewise Spurgeon preached:

Faith in the living God and his Son Jesus Christ is always the result of the new birth, and can never exist except in the regenerate. Whoever has faith is a saved man.

A man’s conversion is nothing, his believing is nothing, his profession is nothing unless he is made to be a new creature in Christ Jesus… If our faith has not brought with it the Holy Spirit, if, indeed, it is not the fruit of the Spirit…then our faith is presumption, and our profession is a lie.

We are chosen of God, according to the good pleasure of his will, and this alone is blessedness. Then, since we cannot and will not come to God of ourselves, he works graciously in us, and attracts us powerfully; he subdues our unwillingness, and removes our inability by the almighty workings of his transforming grace.

Conversion is as divine a work as creation. ^[90]

Elsewhere Spurgeon is recorded as preaching:

I believe nothing because Calvin taught it, but because I have found his teaching in the Word of God. We hold and assert again and again that the truth which Calvin preached was the very truth which the apostle Paul had long ago written in his inspired epistles, and which is most clearly revealed in the discourses of our blessed Lord Himself. ^[91]

Those great truths, which are called Calvinism . . . are I believe, the essential doctrines of the Gospel that is in Jesus Christ. Now I do not ask whether you believe all this. It is possible you may not. But I believe you will before you enter heaven. I am persuaded that as God may have washed your hearts, He will wash your brains before you enter heaven. ^[92]

The doctrine of justification itself, as preached by an Arminian, is nothing but the doctrine of salvation by works, lifted up; for he always thinks faith is a work of the creature and a condition of his acceptance. ^[93]

In a sermon entitled: “Free Will-A Slave,” Spurgeon described his rather famous “prayer of an Arminian”:

[Y]ou never did meet a Christian in your life who ever said he came to Christ without Christ coming to him. You have heard a great many Arminian sermons, I dare say; but you never heard an Arminian prayer – for the saints in prayer appear as one in word, and deed and mind. An Arminian on his knees would pray desperately like a Calvinist. He cannot pray about free-will; there is no room for it.  Fancy him praying:

“Lord, I thank thee I am not like those poor presumptuous Calvinists Lord, I was born with a glorious free-will; I was born with power by which I can turn to thee of myself; I have improved my grace. If everybody had done the same with their grace that I have, they might all have been saved. Lord, I know thou dost not make us willing if we are not willing ourselves. Thou givest grace to everybody; some do not improve it, but I do.

There are many that will go to hell as much bought with the blood of Christ as I was; they had as much of the Holy Ghost given to them; they had as good a chance, and were as much blessed as I am. It was not thy grace that made us to differ; I know it did a great deal, still I turned the point; I made use of what was given me, and others did not-that is the difference between me and them.”

That is a prayer for the devil, for nobody else would offer such a prayer as that. Ah! when they are preaching and talking very slowly, there may be wrong doctrine; but when they come to pray, the true thing slips out; they cannot help it. ^[94]

In answer to the “straw man” that gracism inhibits evangelism, Spurgeon believed just the opposite and wrote:

Did not Charnock, Goodwin and Howe agonize for souls, and what were they but Calvinists? Did not Jonathan Edwards preach to sinners, and who more clear and explicit on these doctrinal matters. . . . In the history of the church, with but few exceptions, you could not find a revival at all that was not produced by the orthodox faith [of gracism]. . . . If you turn to the continent of America, how gross the falsehood that Calvinistic doctrine is unfavorable to revivals! Look at that wondrous shaking under Jonathan Edwards and others which we might quote. ^[95]

The following is a brief excerpt from a sermon given in full in the next chapter:

Coming to Christ is so obnoxious to human nature that, although, so far as physical and mental forces are concerned, men could come if they would; it is strictly correct to say that they cannot and will not unless the Father who hath sent Christ doth draw them. . . .

It is strange how people, when talking about free-will, talk of things which they do not at all understand. “Now,” says one, “I believe men can be saved if they will.” My dear sir, that is not the question at all. The question is, are men ever found naturally willing to submit to the humbling terms of the gospel of Christ? We declare, upon Scriptural authority, that the human will is so desperately set on mischief, so depraved, and so inclined to everything that is evil, and so disinclined to everything that is good, that without the powerful, supernatural, irresistible influence of the Holy Spirit, no human will ever be constrained towards Christ.

Then I must ask one more question: if [we possessed] all that were needed to make a man willing, do you not at once degrade the Holy Spirit? Are we not in the habit of giving all the glory of salvation wrought in us to God the Spirit? But now, if all that God the Spirit does for me is to make me willing to do these things for myself, am I not in a great measure a sharer with the Holy Spirit in the glory? And may I not boldly stand up and say, “It is true the Spirit gave me the will to do it, but still I did it myself, and therein will I glory; for if I did these things myself without assistance from on high, I will not cast my crown at his feet; it is my own crown, I earned it, and I will keep it.” . . . . to come to Christ truly is not in your power, until you are renewed by the Holy Ghost.

You reply, that men sometimes are willing, without the help of the Holy Spirit. I answer—Did you ever meet with any person who was? Scores and hundreds, nay, thousands of Christians have I conversed with, of different opinions, young and old, but it has never been my lot to meet with one who could affirm that he came to Christ of himself, without being drawn. The universal confession of all true believers is this—”I know that unless Jesus Christ had sought me when a stranger wandering from the fold of God, I would to this very hour have been wandering far from him, at a distance from him, and loving that distance well.” With common consent, all believers affirm the truth, that men will not come to Christ till the Father who hath sent Christ doth draw them. ^[96]

H) Gracism in the Modern Church

As in Spurgeon’s day, the majority of the most respected Teachers and Church leaders of the 19^th and 20^th centuries believed the doctrines of Calvinism (gracism) were vital to Christianity. Even President Theodore Roosevelt (1858-1919) was a committed Dutch Reformed Christian.

Men such as the Presbyterians Charles Hodge (1797-1878) and B. B. Warfield (1851-1921), and the Baptist Augustus H. Strong (1836-1921), were the most influential theologians of their day and believed that defending gracism against fairism was critically important. Charles Hodge wrote:

No more soul-destroying doctrine could well be devised than the doctrine that sinners can regenerate themselves, and repent and believe just when they please. . . . As it is a truth both of Scripture and of experience that the unrenewed man can do nothing of himself to secure his salvation, it is essential that he should be brought to practical conviction of that truth. When thus convinced, and not before, he seeks help from the only source whence it can be obtained. ^[97]

Other respected Teachers and Church leaders who believed the same in the 20^th century included Lewis Sperry Chafer (1871-1952), ^[98] founder of Dallas Seminary, Martyn Lloyd-Jones (1899-1981), Francis Schaeffer (1912-1984), Carl F. H. Henry (1913-2003, founding editor of Christianity Today magazine), and D. James Kennedy (1930-2007).

D. M. Lloyd-Jones wrote on the subject:

In every view of salvation the place given in it to the glory of God provides the ultimate test. The proof that it is truly scriptural is that it gives ALL the glory to God.

The extent of man’s fall is so great and extensive that no man by the exercise of his own will or understanding can ever save himself or become a Christian. No man can believe the gospel in and of himself; the power of the Spirit alone can lead anyone to belief; without it we are spiritually dead and lost and ruined, and under the wrath of God.

If you are clear in your theology and in your doctrine you will know that no natural man can believe the gospel… So if you expect a natural man to believe the gospel simply because you are putting it to him, you are denying the gospel; you have not understood it yourself.

There has been so much emphasis upon decision, receiving, yielding, being willing, and giving ourselves that salvation is regarded almost exclusively in terms of our activity… [But] We do not give birth to ourselves, we are not reborn because we believe. We believe be…cause we are reborn.

If we hold that we become regenerate because we have already believed, then we have to show why we need to be regenerated at all… The doctrine of regeneration has a great deal to say about election and this doctrine of divine choice… The natural man hates this doctrine more than any other. ^[99]

The following is a list of current respected Teachers and Church leaders who promote Calvinism (gracism, monergism) as the only biblical view of our salvation, and view fairism (synergism) as unbiblical: John Stott, J. I. Packer, John MacArthur, Donald Bloesch, R. Albert Mohler, Wayne Grudem, D. A. Carson, John Piper, C. J. Mahaney, Mark Driscoll, Tim Keller, Mark Dever, James McDonald, and Rick Warren. ^[100]

Among them we can particularly quote J. I. Packer:

As grace led me to faith in the first place, so grace will keep me believing to the end. Faith, both in its origin and continuance, is a gift of grace.

You thank God [for your salvation] because you do not attribute your repenting and believing to your own wisdom, or prudence, or sound judgment, or good sense.

It cannot be over-emphasised that we have not seen the full meaning of the Cross till we have seen it as the divines of [the Council of] Dort display it [written in opposition to Arminianism]—as the centre of the gospel, flanked on the one hand by total inability and unconditional election, and on the other by irresistible grace and final preservation.

Accordingly, many of the men listed above were signatories on the Cambridge Declaration in 1996, a statement of faith by the Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals which includes many of the leading Teachers and leaders of American Christianity today. The Declaration was crafted as “a call to repentance for the evangelical church in order to reaffirm the historical Christian truths that are articulated by the five solas [of the Protestant Reformation].” ^[101]

Regarding salvation by grace alone, the members were concerned about “An increasing focus on man’s ability to respond to God’s grace, rather than a focus upon God’s ability to save man.” Accordingly, they wrote, “A denial that salvation is in any sense a work of the human heart, either fully or partially.” ^[102] More specifically, the Cambridge Declaration states:

God’s grace in Christ is not merely necessary but is the sole efficient cause of salvation . . . . We deny that salvation is in any sense a human work. Human methods, techniques or strategies by themselves cannot accomplish this transformation. Faith is not produced by our unregenerated human nature.

Infants do not induce, or cooperate in, their own procreation and birth; no more can those who are ‘dead in trespapasses and sins’ prompt the quickening operation of God’s Spirit within them. . . . sinners cannot obey the gospel, any more than the law, without renewal of heart. ^[103]

In regards to a modern perspective on gracism, important as well is the significant resurgence of gracism among Christian youth as recently documented in the book, Young, Restless, Reformed: A Journalist’s Journey with the New Calvinists, by Collin Hansen (Crossway, 2008).

I) Fairism in the Modern Church

While gracism has been by far the majority position of the Christian Church throughout its 2000 year history, and traditionally fairism has been strongly denounced as an attack on the Gospel of grace, unfortunately, in our opinion, this is no so in our day. Others agree. Michael Horton, Professor of Theology and Apologetics at Westminster has written:

What the Reformers did condemn was Semi-Pelagianism, which was captured in the slogan, facienti quod in se est Deus non denegat gratiam (“God will not deny his grace to those who do that which lies within their power”). . . . The modern equivalent of “God will not deny his grace to those who do that which lies within their power” might be, “God helps those who help themselves,” the latter endorsed by 87 percent of American evangelicals, that number rising with frequency of involvement in evangelical churches. ^[104]

Unfortunately, popularity is usually not a indication of biblical fidelity and this is no exception. “God helps those people get saved who help themselves get saved” is precisely what fairism claims and its humanistic rather that theistic foundation is obvious.

Finally, J. I. Packer, one of the most respected and influential theologians of our generation, is worth the following rather lengthy quote from his introduction to Luther’s Bondage of the Will ^[105]:

What is the modern reader to make of The Bondage of the Will? That it is a brilliant and exhilarating performance, a masterpiece of the controversialist’s difficult art, he will no doubt readily admit; but now comes the question, is Luther’s case any part of God’s truth? and, if so, has it a message for Christians to-day?

No doubt the reader will find the way by which Luther leads him to be a strange new road, an approach which in all probability he has never considered, a line of thought which he would normally label ‘Calvinistic’ and hastily pass by. This is what Lutheran orthodoxy itself has done; and the present-day Evangelical Christian (who has semi-Pelagianism in his blood) will be inclined to do the same. But both history and Scripture, if allowed to speak, counsel us otherwise.

Historically, it is a simple matter of fact that Martin Luther and John Calvin, and, for that matter, Ulrich Zwingli, Martin Bucer, and all the leading Protestant theologians of the first epoch of the Reformation, stood on precisely the same ground here. On other points, they had their differences; but in asserting the helplessness of man in sin, and the sovereignty of God in grace, they were entirely at one. To all of them, these doctrines were the very life-blood of the Christian faith. A modern editor of Luther’s great work underscores this fact: ‘Whoever puts this book down without having realized that evangelical theology stands or falls with the doctrine of the bondage of the will has read it in vain.’

The doctrine of free justification by faith only, which became the storm-center of so much controversy during the Reformation period, is often regarded as the heart of the Reformers’ theology, but this is hardly accurate. The truth is that their thinking was really centered upon the contention of Paul, echoed with varying degrees of adequacy by Augustine, and Gottschalk, and Bradwardine, and Wycliffe, that the sinner’s entire salvation is by free and sovereign grace only. The doctrine of justification by faith was important to them because it safeguarded the principle of sovereign grace; but it actually expressed for them only one aspect of this principle, and that not its deepest aspect.

The sovereignty of grace found expression in their thinking at a profounder level still, in the doctrine of monergistic regeneration–the doctrine, that is, that the faith which receives Christ for justification is itself the free gift of a sovereign God, bestowed by spiritual regeneration in the act of effectual calling. To the Reformers, the crucial question was not simply, whether God justifies believers without works of law. It was the broader question, whether sinners are wholly helpless in their sin, and whether God is to be thought of as saving them by free, unconditional, invincible grace, not only justifying them for Christ’s sake when they come to faith, but also raising them from the death of sin by His quickening Spirit in order to bring them to faith.

Here was the crucial issue: whether God is the author, not merely of justification, but also of faith; whether, in the last analysis, Christianity is a religion of utter reliance on God for salvation and all things necessary to it, or of self-reliance and self-effort. ‘Justification by faith only’ is a truth that needs interpretation. The principle of sola fide is not rightly understood till it is seen as anchored in the broader principle of sola gratia.

What is the source and status of faith? Is it the God-given means whereby the God-given justification is received, or is it a condition of justification which it is left to man to fulfill? Is it a part of God’s gift of salvation, or is it man’s own contribution to salvation? Is our salvation wholly of God, or does it ultimately depend on something that we do for ourselves? Those who say the latter (as the Arminians later did) thereby deny man’s utter helplessness in sin, and affirm that a form of semi-Pelagianism is true after all.

It is no wonder, then, that later Reformed theology condemned Arminianism as being in principle a return to Rome (because in effect it turned faith into a meritorious work) and a betrayal of the Reformation (because it denied the sovereignty of God in saving sinners, which was the deepest religious and theological principle of the Reformers’ thought). Arminianism was, indeed, in Reformed eyes a renunciation of New Testament Christianity in favor of New Testament Judaism; for to rely on one self for faith is no different in principle from relying on oneself for works, and the one is as un-Christian and anti-Christian as the other. In the light of what Luther says to Erasmus, there is no doubt that he would have endorsed this judgment.

These things need to be pondered by Protestants today. With what right may we call ourselves children of the Reformation? Much modern Protestantism would be neither owned nor even recognized by the pioneer Reformers. The Bondage of the Will fairly sets before us what they believed about the salvation of lost mankind. In the light of it, we are forced to ask whether Protestant Christendom has not tragically sold its birthright between Luther’s day and our own.

Has not Protestantism today become more Erasmian than Lutheran? Do we not too often try to minimize and gloss over doctrinal differences for the sake of inter-party peace? Are we innocent of the doctrinal indifferentism with which Luther charged Erasmus? Do we still believe that doctrine matters? Or do we now, with Erasmus, rate a deceptive appearance of unity as of more importance than truth?

Have we not grown used to an Erasmian brand of teaching from our pulpits–a message that rests on the same shallow synergistic conceptions which Luther refuted, picturing God and man [as] each having his own contribution to make to man’s salvation and each depending on the dutiful cooperation of the other for the attainment of that end? . . . . Is it not true, conversely, that it is rare today to hear proclaimed the diagnosis of our predicament which Luther–and Scripture–put forward: that man is hopeless and helpless in sin, fast bound in Satan’s slavery, at enmity with God, blind and dead to the things of the Spirit? . . . Can we deny the essential rightness of Luther’s exegesis of the texts? And if not, dare we ignore the implications of his exposition?

To accept the principles which Martin Luther vindicates in The Bondage of the Will would certainly involve a mental and spiritual revolution for many Christians at the present time. It would involve a radically different approach to preaching and the practice of evangelism, and to most other departments of theology and pastoral work as well. God-centered thinking is out of fashion today, and its recovery will involve something of a Copernican revolution in our outlook on many matters. But ought we to shrink from this? Do we not stand in urgent need of such teaching as Luther here gives us—teaching which humbles man, strengthens faith, and glorifies God—and is not the contemporary Church weak for the lack of it?

The issue is clear. We are compelled to ask ourselves: If the Almighty God of the Bible is to be our God, if the New Testament Gospel is to be our message, if Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today and forever-is any other position than Luther’s possible? Are we not in all honesty bound to stand with him in ascribing all might, and majesty, and dominion, and power, and all the glory of our salvation to God alone? Surely no more important or far-reaching question confronts the Church to-day. ^[106]

Not if our primary desire is to honor God and His word.

Extras & Endnotes

Devotion to Dad

Father, we are grateful for so many men in the past who have endeavored to be faithful to properly interpreting and teaching Your word. May we do the same and may You raise up many more to know and preach the real grace of God so that real revival may come.

Gauging Your Grasp

• What do we mean by fairism? What do we mean by gracism?
• Why do we claim that the debate between these two views has never even been close to “50/50”? Do you agree or disagree?
• What is the significance of the decision of the Council of Orange?
• What were some of your favorite quotes in this chapter? Why?

Recommended Reading

• Regarding the psychological aspects of human spiritual inability see chapters 4.12-14
• Regarding the psychological aspects of regeneration and saving faith see chapter 4.14.16.
• For an important discussion on what is at stake in the debate between gracism and fairism see J. I. Packer’s introduction to Martin Luther’s Bondage of the Will (Revel, 1957), 13-61.

Publications & Particulars

1. Dave Hunt, What Love Is This? (Berean Call, 2006), 19. ↑

2. See quotes in support of gracism by Richard Baxter and John Bunyan online at http://www.monergism.com. ↑

3. David F. Wells, Distinguished Senior Research Professor at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary has written regarding the difference between the First and Second “Great Awakenings” in America: 

   This Second Great Awakening ushered in the new Age of Protestantism. The age was new not only in the extent to which Protestant belief affected the nation but in its theological temper as well. The Puritan establishment had been formed around Calvinistic beliefs, and it was these that were given new life under Jonathan Edwards in the First Great Awakening of the eighteenth century.

   The second half of the nineteenth century, by contrast, saw the emergence of a pervasive Arminianism, which, as George Marsden has noted, was a way of thinking that was thoroughly in step with the active, confident, and democratic mood in the country. Achieving a perfect embodiment in Charles Finney, this revivalistic Arminianism eventually stifled, if not supplanted, the older form of Reformation thinking, and it has continued to flow through our own century, losing depth as it has gained breadth, finally spilling out over most of contemporary evangelicalism. (No Place for Truth [Eerdmans, 1993], 31-2)

   Merrill Unger, author of the widely used Unger’s Bible Dictionary, adds:

   The various charismatic bodies are predominantly Arminian rather than Calvinistic. The Assemblies of God, organized in 1914, drafted a doctrinal statement in 1916 which upheld Arminian theology. Other groups also follow the Arminian view, holding that a truly born-again believer may fall away and be lost–a position stoutly denied by Calvinistic theology.

   In these matters the charismatic revivalism was greatly influenced by the early Methodist Church, the largest and most influential Arminian group in America, and by numerous other smaller Arminian groups. (NT Teaching on Tongues [Kregel, 1971], 6) ↑

4. James Montgomery Boice, Ephesians (Baker, 2001), 47. ↑

5. Theophilus, To Autolycus, I.2. Online at http://www.ccel.org. ↑

6. Tertullian, Ibid, 297 ↑

7. Origen, Ibid., 282. ↑

8. Arnobius, Ibid., 297. ↑

9. Athanasius, Ibid., 297. ↑

10. Jerome, Ibid., 298. All of these quotes serve to refute Mr. Hunt who claims: “A study of early church history reveals that Calvinistic doctrines were unknown during the church’s first three centuries.” (Hunt, 19) ↑

11. Augustine, Ibid. ↑

12. Augustine, Against Two Letters of the Pelagians, 2:23; online at http://www.ccel.org. ↑

13. Ibid., 1:37. ↑

14. Ibid., 4:13-14. ↑

15. Augustine, Enchiridion, 32; online at http://www.ccel.org. ↑

16. Augustine, On the Grace of Christ and Original Sin, 1:27; online at http://www.ccel.org. ↑

17. Augustine, On the Predestination of the Saints, 39; online at http://www.ccel.org. ↑

18. Canons of the Second Council of Orange; online at

    http://www.reformed.org/documents/canons_of_orange.html) ↑

19. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica, II-11, q. 6, art. i, resp.; online at http://www.newadvent.org/summa ↑

20. Thomas Aquinas, Commentary on St. Paul’s Epistle to the Ephesians; online at http://dhspriory.org/thomas/Eph2.htm#3. ↑

21. Biographical Dictionary of Christian Theologians (BDCT), Patrick W. Carey and Joseph T. Lienhard, eds. (Hendrickson, 2002), 478. ↑

22. Thomas Stapleton quoted in John Owen (1616-1683), Pneumatologia, section VI and Appendix; online at http://www.ccel.org. ↑

23. BDCT, 115. ↑

24. Melchior Cano, quoted by Owen. ↑

25. Martin Luther, The Bondage of the Will, trans. J. I. Packer and O. R. Johnston (Baker, 1957), 53. ↑

26. Ibid., 100. ↑

27. Ibid., 54. ↑

28. Ibid. ↑

29. Martin Luther, quoted by Horton, 299. ↑

30. Ibid., 299. ↑

31. Martin Luther, Small Catechism, online at http://www.ccel.org/ccel/ luther. ↑

32. The Formula of Concord, section II.25: “Free Will or Human Powers”; online at http://www.bookofconcord.org/sd-freewill.php. ↑

33. Alasdair Heron, The Holy Spirit (Westminster, 1983), 100. ↑

34. Luther, Bondage, 25. ↑

35. Ibid., 78. ↑

36. Geoffrey W. Bromiley, “Faith,” International Standard Bible Encyclopedia (ISBE), Geoffrey W. Bromiley, ed., 4 vols., (Eerdmans, 1988), II.273. ↑

37. Reference unavailable. ↑

38. Blaise Pascal, Pensées, (284, 284); online at http://www.ccel.org/ccel/pascal/ pensees. ↑

39. John Owen, The Holy Spirit: His Gifts and Power (Kregel, 1967), 159. ↑

40. John Bunyan, quoted online at http://www.monergism.com. ↑

41. Matthew Henry, Commentary on the Whole Bible, 6 vols., vol. 6, Eph 2:8-9; online at http://www.ccel.org. ↑

42. Avery Dulles, The Assurance of Things Hoped For (Oxford University Press, 1994), 227. ↑

43. William Tyndale, quoted by Horton, 299. ↑

44. Dave Hunt, What Love is This? (Berean Call, 2006). ↑

45. John Calvin, Sermons on Ephesians, quoted by Donald Bloesch, The Holy Spirit (Intervarsity, 2000), 330. ↑

46. Calvin, quoted at http://www.monergism.com. ↑

47. Ibid. ↑

48. Ibid. ↑

49. John Calvin, The Institutes of the Christian Religion, 3.2.34; online at http://www.ccel.org. ↑

50. Westminster Confession of Faith, Chapter IX.3; online at http://www.opc.org/wcf.html. ↑

51. Ibid., X.1-2. ↑

52. Ibid., XIV.

    ↑

53. George Whitefield, quoted by Horton, 290. ↑

54. George Whitefield, quoted in Arnold Dallimore, George Whitefield, 2 vols. (The Banner of Truth Trust, 1970), I.406. ↑

55. Ibid., I.407-8. ↑

56. Dallimore, I.408. ↑

57. John Gerstner, The Rational Biblical Theology of Jonathan Edwards, 3 vols. (Berea, 1991), I.488. ↑

58. Cotton Mather, “A faithful account of the doctrine professed and practiced in the churches of New England…” (Boston, 1726).268 f. ↑

59. Ian Murray, Jonathan Edwards (Banner of Truth Trust, 1996), 102-3. ↑

60. Ibid., 103-107. ↑

61. Ibid., 468-70. ↑

62. Many missionary greats would be offended by the following from Dave Hunt: “Certainly the zeal of such men and women in bringing the gospel to the world could not be because of their Calvinism but only in spite of it.” (30). Certainly Mr. Hunt has not read at least Whitefield and Spurgeon, two great Evangelists who preached that gracism actually encouraged their evangelism. ↑

63. Jonathan Edwards, quoted online at http://www.monergism.com. ↑

64. Ibid. ↑

65. Jonathan Edwards, Freedom of the Will, IV.3; online at http://www.reformedreader.org/rbb/edwards/fowindex.htm. ↑

66. James Montgomery Boice, Ephesians (Baker, 2001), 47. ↑

67. Joel Beeke and Randall Pedersen, quoted online at http://www.monergism.com. ↑

68. Jonathan Edwards, quoted by Donald Bloesch, A Theology of Word & Spirit (Intervarsity, 1992), 247. ↑

69. The Great Awakening, Alan Heimert and Perry Miller eds. (Bobbs-Merrill, 1967), 8. ↑

70. Ibid. ↑

71. Jonathan Edwards, “Justification by Faith Alone” excerpted from The Great Awakening, (Bobbs-Merrill, 1967), 8-13. ↑

72. Dallimore notes: “the Moravians had been the Wesleys’ first teachers in evangelical Christianity” (180). ↑

73. The history of the Moravian Church goes back to John Hus (1369-1415), perhaps the first Protestant of the Middle Ages. The Moravians hold to traditional gracist creeds including the Augsburg Confession, Luther’s Small Catechism, and the Thirty-nine Articles of the Church of England. (cf. “Moravian Church” online at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ Moravian_Church. ↑

74. John Wesley, Journal, Vol. 1, pp. 423-4. ↑

75. On the struggle for salvation experienced by the Wesleys see Dallimore, I:180-82. ↑

76. Martin Luther, Preface to Letter of St. Paul to the Romans; online at http://www.ccel.org/l/luther/romans/pref_romans.html ↑

77. Dallimore, I:186. ↑

78. John Wesley writes in his journal:

    I was strongly convinced that the cause of my uneasiness [about his soul] was unbelief, and that the gaining a true, living faith was ‘the one thing needful’ for me. But still I fixed not this faith on the right object; I meant faith in God, not faith in or through Christ. Again, I knew not that I was wholly void of this faith, but only thought I had not enough of it. Dallimore, I:181. ↑

79. Ibid., I.271. ↑

80. Ibid. ↑

81. Ibid. ↑

82. Ibid., I.273. ↑

83. Ibid. ↑

84. Ibid., I:272. ↑

85. Ibid., I.410. ↑

86. Ibid., I.318. ↑

87. Ibid., II.143. ↑

88. It is because Charles Spurgeon is such a respected champion of gracism that Dave Hunt feels it is necessary to slander him. For example, Mr. Hunt writes of Spurgeon:

    His evangelist’s heart often betrayed itself in statements expressing a compassion for the lost and a desire for their salvation—a compassion that contradicted the Calvinism he preached at other times. For example: “As it is my wish [and] your wish . . . so it is God’s wish that all men should be saved. . . . he is no less benevolent than we are.” (47)

    First, we believe Spurgeon himself would rebuke Mr. Hunt for such arrogant, presumptuous slander as claiming that Spurgeon’s “Calvinism” “contradicted” his “compassion for the lost.” Secondly, we believe Spurgeon’s reference to “all men” reflected his belief that this referred to all kinds of men, not every single person.

    Likewise, Mr. Hunt seems to make rather a fool of himself when he writes, again in an attempt to slander Spurgeon:

    Spurgeon, in spite of his claim of being a staunch Calvinist, could not accept the teaching that regeneration came before faith in Christ through the gospel. Calvinists quote him when he supports them, but they ignore statements such as the following:

    If I am to preach faith in Christ to a man who is regenerated [i.e. saved], then the man being regenerated is saved already; and it is an unnecessary and ridiculous thing for me to preach Christ to him and bid him to believe in order to be saved when he is saved already, being regenerate.

    Am I only to preach [saving] faith [i.e. the Gospel] to those who have it [regeneration]? Absurd indeed! Is not this waiting till the man is cured and then bringing him the medicine? This is preaching Christ to the righteous and not to sinners. (126)

    How does Mr. Hunt interpret Spurgeon here as denying regeneration comes before saving faith? Regeneration was synonymous to saving faith for Spurgeon.

    Elsewhere, Mr. Hunt writes: “He [Spurgeon] frequently made statements that contradicted Calvinism” (154). He then quotes some British scholar as testifying to this with no examples given except that Spurgeon once preached an evangelistic sermon that some felt had too much Arminianism in it. This, of course, could be true of any real Calvinist just preaching the Gospel and not explaining his whole theology.

    Finally, we note that Mr. Hunt has claimed:

    The defense of Calvinism traps even the best minds into hopeless contradictions. Spurgeon himself couldn’t seem to make up his mind. (220)

    We seriously doubt Mr. Hunt would want to publicly debate Spurgeon on such an accusation. Fortunately for Mr. Hunt, Spurgeon is dead and unable to defend himself. ↑

89. Charles Spurgeon quoted by R. B. Kuiper, 242. ↑

90. Charles Spurgeon, quoted online at http://www.monergism.com/ thethreshold/articles/onsite/whatmoner_history.html. ↑

91. Charles Spurgeon, Autobiography of Charles Spurgeon (American Baptist Society, n.d.), 44:402. ↑

92. Charles Spurgeon, “The Peculiar Sleep of the Beloved” in Spurgeon’s Sermons, 2 vols. (Baker, 1999), 48. ↑

93. C. H. Spurgeon, “Effects of Sound Doctrine,” online at http://www.spurgeongems.org /vols4-6/vols4-6.htm ), # 324. ↑

94. C. H. Spurgeon, “Free Will—A Slave,” online at http://www.monergism.com. ↑

95. Murray, 471. ↑

96. Charles Spurgeon, Sermon 182, online at http://www.spurgeon.org/ sermons/ 0182.htm. ↑

97. Charles Hodge, quoted online at http://www.monergism.com. ↑

98. Although Dr. Chafer was a “four point” Calvinist. ↑

99. D. M.Lloyd-Jones, quoted online at http://www.monergism.com. ↑

100. Rick Warren in a recent interview with John Piper stated that while he does not like to call himself a “Calvinist” because of all the baggage that comes with that label, he respects Calvin’s teachings on predestination, etc. and said, “I am a monergist.” He also said he had read all (26?) volumes of the Works of Jonathan Edwards. See interview at: http://www.desiringgod.org/blog/posts/john-piper-interviews-rick-warren-on-doctrine. ↑

101. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cambridge_Declaration. ↑

102. Ibid. ↑

103. Cambridge Declaration, quoted online at http://www.monergism.com. ↑

104. Michael Horton, “The Solas of the Reformation” in Here We Stand, James M. Boice and Benjamin E. Sasse, eds. (Baker, 1997), 119. ↑

105. Not surprisingly, Dave Hunt does all he can to discredit Luther’s Bondage of the Will. While it has universally been thought to be a classic by those supporting the Gospel of grace, Mr. Hunt writes of it as if he has never read it. Examples include:

     Often . . . in Bondage, Luther boasts of his conclusion without giving any valid supporting arguments. He secures his thesis by his own mere definition, not by logic or Scripture (219).

     Luther responds [to Erasmus] with much ridicule but little substance (226).

     Throughout Bondage, Luther is like a bully who will not listen to reason. . . . In fact, Bondage contains so many contradictions and so much fallacious reasoning that one wonders how it obtained its reputation as such a logically drawn treatise (227).

     Unfortunately, Mr. Hunt does not produce any specifics of these accusations. ↑

106. J. I. Packer, foreword to Bondage of the Will, 57-61. ↑