Bridging the Divide Between Calvinists and Non-Calvinists
by: Dr. Bruce R. Cole Vol. XXII, No. 7, August 2009
Pastor, Hopeful Baptist Church
Montpelier, Virginia
As I read Eric Green’s article, “A Response Concerning Calvinism in the SBC,” in the May issue of The Banner, I felt led to point out to Calvinists and Non-Calvinists alike that there is another way of looking at this issue. Clearly, Scripture provides an answer to the age-old conundrum between Calvin’s position on the absolute Sovereignty of God and the Arminian view of man’s free will. It can be labeled the doctrine of Positional Election. It is not easy to condense the argument into a short article. But I believe it is now necessary to try to do so.
This cannot be done without first addressing the nature of God, the essential meaning of Logos, and the Lordship of Jesus Christ.
As to God’s nature, God is transcendent. God is a Spirit. He is Holy and wholly other, infinite, and invisible. As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are His ways higher than our ways, and His thoughts are above our thoughts (Isaiah 55:8-9). “No man has seen God at any time” (John 1:18). We can neither look upon His person nor become familiar with His ways. In addition, our sins have separated us from Him, so we cannot know him or communicate with Him directly. For these reasons God must reveal Himself to man.
Our only knowledge of the one true and transcendent God, except for what can be gained through natural revelation, comes through special revelation—God discloses His nature, work and salvation through Jesus Christ, the Logos become flesh.
John tells us, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. The same was in the beginning with God. All things were made by him; and without him was not any thing made that was made” (John 1:1-3), “And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us, (and we beheld his glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father,) full of grace and truth” (John 1:14). The Logos represents more than something said. It includes reasoning and motive. And since “the Lord our God is one Lord,” Logos must also be the visible expression of the one true God. The words “God said…” in Genesis chapter one are understood to be Logos, an expression of the invisible God. Each Old Testament theophany or pre-incarnate visitation of God to His material creation is understood to be an expression of the invisible God. Without Logos there can be no revelation. Logos was with God, and Logos was God. From the time matter came into existence and man came into being, God has manifested Himself to His creation visibly and audibly through Logos whenever He chose to do so, and only through Logos can God be revealed and known.
Considered ontologically God is one Sovereign Spirit: omnipresent, omnipotent and omniscient. Therefore He is! (Exodus 3:14). He knows all things from before the beginning of the world (Acts 15:18). And because His foreknowledge preceded His work of creation, all things are predestined according to His purpose, and He works all things after the counsel of his own will (Ephesians 1:11). “The LORD of hosts has purposed, and who shall disannul it?” (Isaiah 14:27). He gives, and He takes away (Job 1:21). He has mercy on whom He will have mercy, and He has compassion on whom He will have compassion (Romans 9:15). He has created vessels of wrath fitted to destruction (Romans 9:22), and He has chosen who will be saved (Ephesians 1:4). His foreknowledge before creation has enabled Him to work all things together in history to bring about His ultimate purpose. Nothing can change what God has ordained and predestined.
No one with any common sense can believe that the eternally existent and transcendent God is not Sovereign, or that all things do not happen according to His foreordained purpose and will. Calvin’s doctrine of the absolute Sovereignty of God cannot be questioned by any reasonable thought. Yet God qualifies His sovereign purpose with the statement, “He has chosen us in him…” (Ephesians 1:4). The words “in him” signify a requirement for salvation beyond God’s sovereign will. God has chosen, but He has chosen to commit all judgment in this matter to His son (John 5:22). He has declared that only those who are “in Christ” are chosen to receive an inheritance that is incorruptible, and undefiled, and that fades not away, an inheritance that is reserved in heaven for those who are kept by the power of God through faith (1 Peter 1:4-5).
Faith is an important requirement for salvation. Theologians may translate Ephesians 2:8 to read that faith is the gift of God. However, there is no reason not to accept that salvation is the gift intended by Paul in the passage. He wrote to the Romans, “For the wages of sin is death; but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord” (Romans 6:23). See also Acts 2:38, Romans 5:15-16, and Hebrews 6:4 in this regard. Jesus called upon all men to repent and believe the gospel (Mark 1:15). He said to Philip, “I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man comes unto the Father, but by me” (John 14:6). Paul and Silas answered the Philippian jailer, “Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and you shall be saved” (Acts 16:31). It is obvious that faith is essential for salvation. The teaching of man’s free will and the necessity of faith in salvation is as undeniable as is the teaching of the Sovereignty of God. Just as Jesus is the mediator that bridges the divide between Holy God and sinful man, he is also the mediator that bridges between the decree of God’s sovereign choice in salvation and the requirement of man’s faith for salvation. This is more fully understood by considering the Lordship of Jesus Christ.
All revelation from the beginning of creation foreshadows the incarnation of God in the man Christ Jesus. (“Man” is the imperative word.) The Logos became flesh and dwelt among us in the person of the man Christ Jesus (John 1:14), and the man Christ Jesus became “The brightness of his glory, and the express image of his person” (Hebrews 1:3). He is, therefore, the “one mediator between God and men” (1 Timothy 2:5), and he alone bridges the divide between Holy God and sinful man. Logos spoke to us through the man Christ Jesus (Hebrews 1:1-2), and revealed God’s love to us through the man Christ Jesus (John 14:8-11). On the cross, God [Logos] was in the man Christ Jesus reconciling the world unto Himself (2 Corinthians 5:19). As a result of Jesus’ obedience and death on the cross, Jesus is declared Lord: “Wherefore God also has highly exalted him, and given him a name which is above every name: That at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of things in heaven, and things in earth, and things under the earth; And that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father” (Philippians 2:9-11).
The title “Lord,” kurios, means supreme in authority. After Jesus’ death, burial and resurrection, Jesus said to his disciples, “All authority is given unto me in heaven and in earth” (Matthew 28:18). We are also told, “For the Father judges no man, but has committed all judgment unto the Son: That all men should honor the Son, even as they honor the Father” (John 5:22-23). “But this man, because he continues ever, has an unchangeable priesthood. Wherefore he is able also to save them to the uttermost that come unto God by him, seeing he ever lives to make intercession for them” (Hebrews 7:24-25).
It is true that the Bible claims the one true and transcendent God is Sovereign. But after Jesus’ death and resurrection Jesus was given “provisional sovereignty.” Jesus was “declared to be the Son of God with power, according to the spirit of holiness, by the resurrection from the dead: Jesus Christ our Lord” (Roman 1:4). The words Christoú toú Kuríou heemoón in Romans 1:4 are also significant. Not only is Jesus supreme in authority. He is “our” Lord. He is supreme in authority over God’s kingdom, in heaven and earth, and men are saved only when they come to him in faith and are positioned “in him” through faith by the baptism of the Holy Spirit (1 Corinthians 12:12; Ephesians 1:10-14).
Those preordained and elected to salvation are those who come to Christ by faith and are baptized into him and found “in him.” Doctrinally this concept of Positional Election can be stated in the following eight points: the Sovereignty of God, the Provisional Sovereignty of Jesus Christ, the Free will of Man, Total Depravity, Universal Atonement, Salvation by Faith, Baptism in Christ, and Eternal Security.
The Provisional Sovereignty of the man Christ Jesus and Positional Election are clearly taught in Scripture. Jesus has been declared to be Lord (Philippians 2:9-11). He is seated at the right hand of God the Father in heaven (Matthew 16:19). He has been given exceeding great power by God the Father, “according to the working of his mighty power, which he wrought in Christ, when he raised him from the dead, and set him at his own right hand in the heavenly places, far above all principality, and power, and might, and dominion, and every name that is named, not only in this world, but also in that which is to come: and has put all things under his feet, and gave him to be the head over all things to the church” (Ephesians 1:19-22). He is the only means of salvation (Acts 4:12). And the elect are those who are found “in him” (Ephesians 1:4). The Bible tells us, “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with all spiritual blessings in heavenly places in Christ: According as he has chosen us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and without blame before him in love … Having made known unto us the mystery of his will, according to his good pleasure which he has purposed in himself: That in the dispensation of the fullness of times he might gather together in one all things in Christ, both which are in heaven, and which are on earth; even in him: In whom also we have obtained an inheritance, being predestinated according to the purpose of him who works all things after the counsel of his own will” (Ephesians 1:4, 9-11, emphasis added).
It is important to note that not only has the man Christ Jesus been granted provisional sovereignty, he shall continue to reign: “For he must reign, until he has put all enemies under his feet” (1 Corinthians 15:25). However, the word “until” limits his reign and provisional sovereignty, and may explain his reference to being “the beginning and the end.” At some point in the past Jesus’ reign and provisional sovereignty began. (I believe at his resurrection.) At some point in the future his reign and provisional sovereignty must end. The sovereign authority given to the man Christ Jesus must be relinquished to the Sovereignty of the transcendent God who existed before the beginning as one God, all in all.
Scripture identifies when this will happen: “For he must reign, until he has put all enemies under his feet. The last enemy that shall be destroyed is death. For he has put all things under his feet. But when he says, all things are put under him, it is manifest that he is the exception, which put all things under him. And when all things shall be subdued unto him, then shall the Son also himself be subject unto him that put all things under him, that God may be all in all” (1 Corinthians 15:25-28). When this occurs, the man Christ Jesus will forever be the Lamb of God who was slain for the sins of the world. He will always be before the throne of God. He will always be our precious Savior. But the Son also himself will become subject unto him that put all things under him, “that God may be all in all.” No material body of any physical shape or size can contain the transcendent nature of the omnipresent, omnipotent, and omniscient God eternally, not even the glorified human body of the man Christ Jesus.
Theologians may argue the doctrine of election until Jesus comes back. But the concept presented here does bridge the divide between the extreme positions of Calvinism and Arminianism. It offers common ground upon which all Southern Baptists can come together, and is biblical truth that can hold brothers together in Christian fellowship and prevent any schism within the SBC. I hope this concept will open vigorous debate and serve the above purposes in a way that will glorify God and make our convention stronger.