Here is my sixth article regarding my beliefs concerning salvation and Calvinism. This one summarizes my views about the relationship of faith and regeneration—being born again. Calvinism teaches that regeneration precedes faith and is something that God does for the elect, which will result in faith. I believe the Scripture is ever so clear that faith precedes regeneration.
I affirm that faith precedes and is the prerequisite for regeneration—being born again (John 1:12-13, 3:3, 3:15-16, 36, 5:24, 6:40, 7:39, 12:36, and 20:31; 1 Peter 1:23; 1 John 5:1,4). These Scriptures all show that spiritual life follows the sinner’s belief in Jesus Christ. The Apostle John gave as his reason for writing his gospel, “but these things have been written so that ye might believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God: and that believing ye might have life through His name” (John 20:31). Why would John or God write this in order for people to read, believe and be saved if Calvinism is true since, according to Calvinism, God knows they cannot read this and believe? 1
Jesus continually called on people to believe so that they would not die in their sins, “Therefore I said to you that you will die in your sins; for unless you believe that I am He, you will die in your sins” (John 8:24 ). The obvious conclusion to draw from this statement is that they need to believe in order not to die in their sins, rather than the Calvinist secret that while this is true–if one does not believe he will die in his sins–the other truth is that Jesus is telling them what to do but knows they cannot unless they are the elect; therefore, it is not a merciful plea, but rather a recitation of brute facts.
As far as the Scripture is concerned, it is very clear that faith precedes the new birth. The Scripture is replete, lucid, and compelling in teaching that the order is faith prior to regeneration, and faith is a gift endowed by God to man in creation, not in selective regeneration; moreover, that God is working in order to give men and women a real chance to trust Him unto salvation (John 16:8).2Salvation is entirely a work of God since He has provided everything necessary, even the gift of faith, by which sinners receive the salvation of the Lord. That election is unconditional and salvation is offered unconditionally and that the experience of salvation by an individual is conditioned upon God-granted faith3 (Acts 16:31; Romans 5:1; Hebrews 11:6). That repentance is a grace gift and has been given by God (Acts 5:3 1, 11:18).Further, that the clear declaration of Scripture is that God genuinely desires for all to come to repentance (2 Peter 3:9), gets no pleasure in the death of the wicked, and pleads with man to turn to Him and be saved (Ezekiel 33:11). Moreover, the Scripture makes faith the unmistakable, undeniable responsibility of man, as enabled by grace, in order to receive salvation; afortiori, the Scripture is lucidly clear, as well as deliberately commanding and compelling in presenting God as pleading with man to repent and believe, and praying for the lost (Luke 23:34; Matthew 23:37; John 11:42), which is disingenuous if God knows that man cannot do what He has pleaded with him to do (John 7:17) and scolded him for not believing (John 5:40-47).4 For example, while you have the light, believe in the light, in order that you may become sons of light” (John 12:36, emphasis added). Paul also placed faith as prior to regeneration and the condition that believers must meet in order to be saved. “For you are all sons of God through faith in Christ Jesus (Gal. 3:26, emphasis added).
I disaffirm that faith is the evidence of the new birth;5 That man since the fall in the Garden can exercise faith in Christ apart from the enabling provision of God (see affirmation VI 1); however, enabling is categorically different that irresistibly causing.
- According to Calvinism, no one can read John’s writings or any Scripture and believe and be saved because salvation is monergistic—God alone.
According to Calvinism, a person must be regenerated first and then and only then can he read and believe; further, not only can he then believe, he must. Consequently, this is to turn what John clearly says in to some esoteric code for the Calvinist doctrine of regeneration prior to faith and that for only a few rather than the clear teaching that God had John write this gospel so that people, by the grace of God, could see who Jesus really is and what He did for them, believe and be saved. [↩]
- The means of this enablement include but are not limited to: conviction of the Holy Spirit (John 16:7-11), working of the Holy Spirit (Hebrews 6:1-6), good soil (Matthew 13:1-23), and the power of the gospel (Romans 1:16). Over sixty times in the New Testament God says faith, belief, and trust in God is to be the basis of receiving God’s forgiveness and grace.
As explained under depravity and elsewhere, since the fall, man is in such spiritual bondage that he cannot, nor will he have any desire, to come to God unless God offers “enabling grace”. This enabling grace may be referred to at times as “calling”, “conviction”, “drawing” or “opening the heart” among other things; but all refer to God graciously granting sufficient grace for a person to hear the good news, understand, and be able to choose to receive God’s work of redemption for him/her by God given ability to exercise faith unto salvation or to choose to remain in their sin. Thus, this is an “Adam like” decision where he could choose to do otherwise.
There is nothing that a sinner can do to merit this enabling, and this enabling through the work of the Holy Spirit (John 16:8) is coextensive with the preaching of the gospel and the work of the gospel in the heart of man (Romans 10:14; Acts 16:14; Hebrews 4:12).
Further, faith, the exercise of the choice which means that one could do otherwise, is an inextricable part of man being made in the image of God. This image was so corrupted by the fall that while man can still make many choices about many things or choose to act otherwise, he is now, unlike Adam, unable to exercise saving faith—choose God—on his own. However, this is inability is overcome through God’s enabling grace.
Consequently, the charge by many Calvinist’s that rejecting Calvinism results in minimizing the damage of the fall, or that I am saying that man’s free will is sufficient to choose to trust God on his own is simply a straw man. Actually, the difference is not in whether or not man is totally depraved or not, whether he needs God’s grace to come to God or whether salvation is totally a work of God, but rather does the Scripture teach that God sovereignly chose to create man with the ability to exercise faith or not exercise faith and whether God restores that ability in His salvation plan.
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- Man’s part in salvation in Acts, e.g., Acts 2:37-41; 3:19-26; 7:51; 8:6-14, 22-23, 36-37; 9:35, 42; 10:34-35, 43; 11:21; 13:8-13, 38-41, 46-47; 14:1, 15:19; 16:30-34; 17:2-4, 11-12, 17, 30-31; 18:4-8, 19, 27-28; 19:8-9, 18; 20:21, 22:18, 26:17-20, 28:23-24. Could it be God works through people? “But arise, and stand on your feet; for this purpose I have appeared to you, to appoint you a minister and a witness not only to the things which you have seen, but also to the things in which I will appear to you; delivering you from the Jewish people and from the Gentiles, to whom I am sending you, to open their eyes so that they may turn from darkness to light and from the dominion of Satan to God, in order that they may receive forgiveness of sins and an inheritance among those who have been sanctified by faith in Me (Acts 26:16-18, emphasis added). [↩]
- Note that their disbelief is not because they have not been regenerated, but rather Christ attributes it to the fact that they do not love God, they receive glory from one another, and they don’t believe Moses, which clearly implies he thought they should and could. [↩]
- John Piper says “Faith is the evidence of new birth, not the cause of it.” (John Piper, Desiring God: Meditations of a Christian Hedonist, (Sisters, OR.: Multnomah Books, 1996) p63-64. Then from a booklet titled, TULIP: What We Believe about the Five Points of Calvinism by John Piper, Piper also states, “Except for the continual exertion of saving grace, we will always use our freedom to resist God” (p. 9, para. 6, emphasis added). Consequently, according to Piper, and Calvinists, given a choice, man would always choose to reject God and stay in his sin, and God causes a man to be born again, and only then will man believe; hence man is forced into a position of necessarily believing against his will; thus John Piper’s statement, “The native hardness of our hearts makes us unwilling and unable to turn from sin and trust the Savior. Therefore conversion involves a miracle of new birth. Thus new birth precedes and enables faith and repentance. Nevertheless, faith and repentance are our acts. We are accountable to do them….God grants us the inclination we need” Desiring God, p 62, is doublespeak.
First, being born again is not an inclination, it is a determination made by God—monergistically. He clearly, as do Calvinists, places regeneration—which had to happen against the sinner’s will, their statements to the contrary not withstanding—prior to faith. His statement that “faith and repentance are our acts” is a little misleading. While it is true that the human does them after being regenerated quite apart from anything, the faith and repentance are the unalterable and inevitable acts of the once regenerated person. It may be that we are accountable, but no amount of uncertainty can be gleaned from a Calvinist understanding of that accountability or responsibility. It is a responsibility of the regenerated that he actually has no choice not to do. In other words, the harsh reality is, that some are regenerated by God without any regard to anything else, and the one God chooses will be regenerated in absolute contradiction to their fallen desire. Then, the one who is regenerated will have no more option not to repent and have faith than he had not to be regenerated. Consequently, any implying or inferring that the sinner, prior to or after regeneration having a choice in being regenerated or exercising faith or not being regenerated or not exercising faith after regeneration, is an illusion.
This is the harsh truth of Calvinism, and it is this truth that takes words like “responsibility”, “accountability”, and the normal teaching of Scripture’s repeated pleas, injunctions and warnings to new levels of obfuscation. I do disagree with those who hold to such understandings, but, more than that, I am profoundly troubled by an unwillingness on the part of many Calvinists to speak forthrightly about these realities in such a way that people understand exactly what is meant. I am absolutely convinced that the vast majority of people who embrace Calvinism do not fully understand or accept this truth of Calvinism, but they think it is not essential to Calvinism when in fact it is. I realize that some Calvinists fully understand this and do their best to communicate it, and I applaud their forthrightness. An example of seeking to soften the edge of Calvinism is seen in statements like, “If we think of ourselves as basically good or even less than totally at odds with God, our grasp of the work of God in redemption will be defective. But if we will humble ourselves under this terrible truth of our total depravity…” (p. 8, para. 1, emphasis added). To anyone reading this, it seems as though a sinner can do something to move into at least understanding some of salvation to the point where sinners “will humble ourselves”, which is impossible if salvation is monergistic and we are dead like people in a grave yard. If this is not his intent, then it is at least misleading or unclear how sinners can humble themselves, or have anything but a defective view of redemption. [↩]