Anthropology

About 12 years ago I engaged in some lengthy dialogue with a fellow graduate student who had abandoned his Christian faith upon reading Richard Dawkins’ book The God Delusion. Below is one of the emails I sent to “Oleg” (not his real name).

Dear “Oleg”

Please allow me to begin by first expressing my profoundest sorrow over the terrible experiences you have been through. I cannot possibly understand the hurt and anguish these things have caused you. I can only say how sorry I am that this has happened to you and that I hope that in spite of it all, you are able to clearly distinguish between the wickedness of the persons that took advantage of you and the goodness of the God they so poorly represented in your case. My heart truly ached within me when I read your email. I know these words of mine may not mean that much, and certainly they can’t erase your personal history or the present feelings that history may yet arouse within you, but please know that I truly and deeply hurt for you because of this. 

I also want to apologize for taking so long to send a response to your last two emails. Despite the passage of so much time, I still, regrettably, have no elaborate treatise to offer you in defense of my position. I have no knock-down argument to give to you. And truthfully, my suspicion is that given the rather lofty standard of evidence you have raised for justifiable belief in God (namely, a theophany), there is not much I can say that you will likely find especially compelling. Nevertheless, I will try. 

Strong Calvinists assert that, because mankind is dead in trespasses and sins, that he cannot respond to the gospel in faith. Therefore, the sinner must be regenerated, through irresistible grace on the unwilling, before he can ever believe the gospel. This assertion amounts to the claim that we must be born again that we might believe, but it falls on both logical and biblical grounds.

First, this Strong Calvinist view effectively denies the omnibenevolence of God by claiming that God arbitrarily regenerates some while denying others. If God is all-good, why is He not good to all? Second, irresistible grace on the unwilling is no different from Divine rape, a deplorable view of God’s love. Third, not one verse of Scripture teaches that we must be regenerated prior to exercising faith. The view is simply the result of extreme and faulty anthropological and theistic presuppositions. Rather, Scripture teaches over and again that we must believe in order to be saved (e.g., Mk. 16:16; Jn. 1:12, 3:16, 20:31; Acts 16:31; Rom. 5:1, 10:9-10; Gal. 3:22). Though Scripture consistently teaches that man is sinful and estranged from God, it never intimates that man is therefore incapable of responding to an offer of salvation. It is God’s goodness that draws us to Him (Jn. 6:44; Rom. 2:4), but it is also God’s goodness that prevents Him from raping our souls with irresistible grace and forcing us, against our will, to believe in Him.

Ironically, if regeneration is truly prior to faith as Strong Calvinists claim, then the very principle of the Reformation, sola fide, is undermined. For if regeneration is prior to faith, then in reality there are no conditions for salvation. To be consistent, therefore, the Strong Calvinist must admit that faith is not a condition for salvation, but merely an evidence of it. 

Pelagianism, condemned by the Council of Carthage in 418, wrongly asserts that only Adam’s bad example, and not his sin, was bequeathed to the rest of the human race. Every human since Adam is born in a state of innocence and is only condemned by his own personal sins. 

Arminianism holds to the view that man has a corrupted nature as a result of Adam’s sin, but man is not judicially guilty because of Adam’s sin. Humans are born with a propensity to sin and will die eternally if they do not cooperate with the grace of God to overcome their sinfulness. 

Strong Calvinism views man as totally depraved and unable to respond to God’s grace in any way. Man is dead and can only be made alive as a result of the irresistible grace of God effectively forcing them against or in spite of their will to become regenerate. This view implicitly embraces the contradiction of forced love as well as a denial of Divine essentialism and simplicity. 

Moderate Calvinism affirms the truth that each man is depraved and judicially guilty as a result of Adam’s sin. Yet, unlike Strong Calvinists, Moderate Calvinists affirm that while the image of God is effaced, it is not erased. Thus, man is capable and responsible to receive the free offer of salvation. God, as essentially loving, does not force salvation on the sinner, but rather persuades the sinner to exercise his free will to accept the offer of eternal life in Christ. Moderate Calvinism takes into account all the relevant biblical data, including the truth of man’s personal and imputed guilt before God (Rom. 3:23, 5:12) as well as his responsibility to respond in faith to the free gift of salvation (Acts. 16:31). Further,  Moderate Calvinism is consistent with a classical view of the existence and nature of God, making it the preferable view both logically and biblically.