* Local News: Spring is right around the corner, and Belhaven University of Jackson is already gearing up for its summer sports camps. Here is a complete list of upcoming Belhaven camps: 1) Men’s and Women’s Soccer (multiple dates) 2)Tennis (March 11-13, 2013, June 10-14, 2013, June 17-21, 2013) 3) Basketball (June 17-20, June 24-27, July 22-25) 4) Football (June 10-13 and July 8-11, July 15-18) and 5) Multi Sport Camp (July 9-13). For more information, go to www.belhaven.edu.
In Part 1, we began discussing the Lutheran Hour’s recent use of the life preserver analogy, which illustrates God’s saving work by comparing it to a river full of drowning people. God throws life preservers—the gospel—to everyone, but some think they can be saved some other way and refuse the help. Those who cling to the help being offered are rescued and those who refuse perish. We will now look more closely at this analogy, using the Lutheran Confessions as a guide.
3. The life preserver analogy inconsistent with the Lutheran Confessions
Reformed theologian Lorraine Boettner once said that the Lutheran Church has, historically, embraced Arminian theology, but this is quite inaccurate, as can be easily proven from even a cursory reading of the 16th century Lutheran confessions. Lutheranism has always articulated just as passionately as Reformed Christianity the doctrines of Total Depravity and Unconditional Election (the T and the U of Calvinism’s TULIP acrostic). In fact, the enslavement of the will and mankind’s inability to choose Christ apart from the renewing work of the Spirit is, if anything, emphasized more by Lutheranism than it is by Presbyterianism. The Formula of Concord (1576) emphatically teaches that no one, in his own sinful will, is able to choose Christ. Consider the following quotation:
“As little as a corpse can make itself alive for bodily, earthly life, so little can people who are spiritually dead raise themselves up to a spiritual life, as it is written, ‘When we were dead through our trespasses, God made us alive together with Christ.’ (Ephesians 2:5) … It is correct to say that in conversion God changes recalcitrant, unwilling people into willing people through the drawing power of the Holy Spirit, and that after this conversion, the reborn human will is not idle in the daily exercise of repentance, but cooperates in all the works of the Holy Spirit which he performs through us. The human creature must hear God’s Word, but cannot believe and accept it on the basis of its own powers, but only through the grace and action of God the Holy Spirit.” —Epitome of the Formula of Concord, Article II
Very much in keeping with this statement, Dr. R.C. Sproul likes to tweak the life preserver analogy, offering a scenario, not of drowning people, but of people who have already drowned and are at the bottom of the river. God dives in, drags them ashore, performs CPR, and restores them. Biblically, fallen sinners are not spiritually sick people, still capable of grabbing on to life preservers. They are spiritually dead, as unable to raise themselves to spiritual life as Lazarus was to raise himself to physical life.
The only explanation for how spiritually dead sinners become alive is simply that God makes them alive. As the Formula says, “In conversion God changes recalcitrant, unwilling people into willing people through the drawing power of the Holy Spirit.” The work is the Holy Spirit’s from start to finish; it is not collaboration, as the life preserver analogy implies. Yes, a decision is made, but that decision flows out of, and would be impossible without, the “grace and action of God the Holy Spirit.”
If life preservers are thrown into a river full of dead bodies, they are not going to do any good. Similarly, God doesn’t simply woo or entice people to spiritual life (for such wooing on spiritual corpses would be fruitless); he unilaterally brings it about. This raises a difficult question. Scripturally, we know, and in day to day reality we see, that not everyone who hears the gospel believes it. Why do some believe while others do not?
It is certainly not that the elect are deserving of special favors from God, while others are not. The conclusion we are forced to come to terms with is that the decision rests in God. Though it may be argued that this isn’t “fair”, we must, as Sproul has said, remember that “fairness” would mean God punishing all people for their sins. Election doesn’t make God unjust; it simply means that some people receive mercy, while others receive justice; no one receives unfairness. Of course, all are invited to believe the Gospel, and God desires that everyone believe it. Yet in the end the spiritual resurrection needed to believe it is wrought, not in all, but in those whom God has chosen to bring it about in.
The Holy Spirit draws all people to Christ (John 12), but according to Reformed theology, in the case of the elect, it's a drawing that always brings about conversion. This is a mystery we can’t fully grasp it, and Scripture doesn’t even invite us to plumb the depth of it. It’s difficult, though, to conclude anything else after reading Paul’s discussion of election in Romans 9.
Consider another quotation from the Formula of Concord:
“God’s eternal election extends only to the righteous, God-pleasing children of God. It is a cause of their salvation, which God brings about. He has arranged everything that belongs to it. Our salvation is so firmly grounded on it {John 10:26-29} that ‘the gates of hell will not prevail against it’ [Matthew 16:18].” —Epitome of the Formula of Concord, Article XI
From the Reformed perspective, if human will determined who makes it to heaven and who doesn’t, no one would ultimately make it. But the Formula clearly teaches that God has chosen to redeem his elect people, and he brings about their salvation and secures it in a manner that cannot be thwarted. Nothing can keep the elect from experiencing the salvation God has determined to give them, not even their stubborn will. If human will could frustrate God’s plan to save, it inevitably always would since all wills are, as a result of the Fall, naturally hostile to God’s will.
If any confessional difference exists between Lutherans and Presbyterians over election, it concerns the “reprobate”, those who ultimately reject Christ. Reformed theology says that those whom God does not elect to salvation are, by default, elected to wrath, not in the sense that God wants any to perish, but in the sense that he chooses to leave them in their sins. Predestination, therefore, is said to be “double”—life for the elect, and death for the non-elect. Lutheranism, emphatic that God wants all to be saved, refuses to attribute condemnation to anything other than mankind’s rebellious will. Lutheranism argues that it, in no sense, stems from God’s eternal decree. As the term “predestination” is used in Scripture only to refer to the salvation of the redeemed, Lutherans say it’s inappropriate to speak of anyone being predestined to damnation.
Lutheranism is careful to point out that those who perish do so because of unbelief, not because they are “elected” to damnation. In reality, Reformed theology’s position differs little, since Presbyterians also believe that God elects people to reprobation, not by actively guaranteeing that they will perish, but simply by leaving them undisturbed in their unbelief. Neither side teaches that God wants to see anyone perish, or that he works to ensure that anyone would perish. Hence, the differences that exist on this point seem to this writer to be more terminological than theological. At any rate enough agreement exists on this point confessionally to where the churches out to be in union with each other.
Comments