J. I. Packer, the famed Reformed Anglican theologian, has written more book forewords than anyone I know. It seems that every book published by a Calvinist either has a foreword or an endorsement written by Packer.
Packer, along with O. R. Johnston, translated Martin Luther’s The Bondage of the Will (Westwood, NJ: Revell, 1957). They did a great job. Luther was a great writer. A fighter. The Bondage of the Will is dripping with sarcasm, wit, and zingers, and Packer and Johnston make it very readable.
But The Bondage of the Will is also worth a place on your bookshelf because it is the greatest defense of the doctrine of total depravity. A Free Grace response to total depravity must take Luther’s arguments into account.
Packer provides a historical and theological introduction to the book. And along the way, he reveals some key assumptions in this debate. Let me offer some quotes and point out the assumptions behind them:
“The truth is that [the Reformer’s] 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” (p. 58).
What does Packer mean by “free and sovereign grace”?
I, too, believe that salvation is by God’s free and sovereign grace, but Packer and I would define those terms differently.
For Packer, “free,” “sovereign,” and “grace” all mean the same thing: that God predestines everything that happens. For Packer, freedom is determinism, sovereignty is determinism, and grace is determinism. But is that the Biblical meaning of those terms? (Hint: No).
Here’s another quote:
“The sovereignty of grace found expression in [the Reformer’s] 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” (p. 58).
In this quote, Packer raises two major topics in the debate over total depravity. First, does God choose who comes to faith in Christ? And second, does regeneration precede faith? That is, does the Bible teach you must be born-again to believe, or that you must believe to be born-again? (Hint: What is the sequence in John 3?)
Here’s a final quote:
“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?…to rely on oneself 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” (p. 59).
Packer is saying that believing in free-will is equivalent to believing in salvation by works. If you believe in free-will, then you’ve made the act of faith a work that contributes to your own salvation.
Based on this, it seems that, when Packer reads the phrase “by faith apart from works,” what he understands is “determinism apart from free-choice.” That’s a huge assumption. Is that a Biblical understanding of faith and works and of the difference between them?
Ken Yates has been doing important work on the question of total depravity. I’ve been tinkering with it, too. The Reformers got many things right. They also got many things wrong. As a Biblicist, you can’t simply take their word as the Word. You have to check all their assumptions about the bondage of the will against Scripture. If not, you’ll suffer the bondage of tradition.
