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.
Ken Tamashiro
Thank You Shawn,
Sometimes I feel like the words or phrases from Reformers sound good and graceful,… but the intentions and purpose go counter to true Grace.
They seem to use deceptive phrases, rather than coming straight out and telling what they believe.
I’ve noticed they use vague language to hide their meanings, so as to avoid conflict.
It reminds me of how Mormans and Jehovah’s Witnesses hide their intentions with words that are cloaked to an unknowing listener.
Thank You for your information,
Ken Tamashiro
Grahame Smith
In essence the reformers message is bondage to a Gods choice of who gets saved or doesnt. No free will at all (irristible grace). Sad a incorrect
Alvin
I hope you all are studying Zane’s commentary on Romans because he shows where the calling was for those ones who would have the Spirit’s “first fruits,” who were groaning as all creation groans for the return of the sons of God. Those sons are first born sons who God foreknew. They are guaranteed to overcome, and He is not ashamed to call them brethren. It’s hard for me to understand how anyone who had Zane as their Professor, but afterwards stopped studying his writings? God showed Zane more truth than anyone I’ve ever known~!
Gerry T. Neal
This translation featured into a debate between the late Dr. John M. Drickamer, a Lutheran, and Prof. David J. Engelsma of the Protestant Reformed Church, a Calvinist. Drickamer wrote a regular column for “Christian News”, a very conservative Lutheran newspaper published out of New Haven, Missouri. He had condemned the Calvinist doctrine of double predestination in one column, and received a response from Engelsma to the effect that Martin Luther had held to the Calvinist rather than the Confessional Lutheran position on double predestination. Engelsma backed his argument up by quoting from “The Bondage of the Will” in the Packer-Johnson translation. In his reply to Engelsma, Drickamer suggested that “The Bondage of the Will”, written in response to Erasmus, reflected an early stage of Luther’s Protestant theology that later developed along the lines of the doctrines of Concord. He also suggested that Packer and Johnson, being Calvinists, had translated Luther through the lens of their own theologian. This debate can be found in Volume V of the Christian News Encyclopedia.
Interestingly, both participants in the debate came down on the free grace side in many of the issues in the free grace/Lordship Salvation controversy. Both taught, for example, that assurance is of the essence of saving faith and must be sought outside ourselves in Christ. Engelsma, much more recently than the debate, wrote a booklet on the subject entitled “The Gift of Assurance” arguing that Puritanism had distorted the original Calvinist position in pretty much the same way that R. T. Kendall, Charles Bell, and Zane Hodges argued. Drickamer, reviewed MacArthur’s “Gospel According to Jesus” for “Christian News”. He entitled the review “The Bad News According to MacArthur” and in it noted that the book confuses Law and Gospel and makes works conditional for salvation rather than the result of salvation, said that the author doesn’t know the ABC’s of Christianity, and suggested that he read Walther’s “The Proper Distinction Between Law and Gospel.” In his book “What is the Gospel? It is Finished”, a collection of his “Christian News” columns which unfortunately was self-published and had a much smaller distribution than it deserved, he included his essay “What is the Gospel” in which he said, much like Zane Hodges was saying at the time, that faith is believing and trusting, and that faith as belief is no different than faith as trust. I don’t have my copy with me so I am relying on memory but he illustrated the point by saying that to trust someone to drive safely is the same thing as believing him to be a safe driver. He also included an essay that I believe had the title “Saved for Sure” in which he argued that the true Gospel makes those who believe it sure of their salvation, and a column that argued that many were teaching Christ’s Lordship in a way that confused the Gospel by making works a requirement for salvation.
With regards to the new birth and faith, the problem many people have with the monergistic position is that they think it requires the Calvinist view of predestination, in which God does not sincerely desire the salvation of everyone (or is schizophrenic on the subject) and has willed the damnation of those who will ultimately be lost from eternity past. Confessional Lutheranism, however, traditionally taught monergism while rejecting the Calvinist viewpoint. God sincerely desires the salvation of all, it taught, and Christ’s death purchased the justification of all, but God gives that justifying grace through intermediary means. Faith is the means whereby we receive it, and the Gospel in all of its forms – preached orally, written, presented visually in the Gospel sacraments, applied individually in absolution – is the means whereby it is brought to the sinner to be received by faith. Through the Gospel – the means of communication – God gives to sinners faith – the means of reception. In Lutheran theology, this does not mean as it does in Reformed theology, that God gives faith only to a select few that He has previously chosen, while rejecting others. The Holy Spirit gives faith through the Gospel to everyone who hears it, but because God works through means, the grace that gives faith through the Gospel can be resisted and rejected – it is universal not limited, resistible not irresistible, yet nevertheless salvation is entirely monergistic. From this point of view, Calvinism which limits God’s saving intent to the elect, and synergism (of which Arminianism is a variety) which makes man’s faith a voluntary response to God’s grace, are both efforts to an answer a question that the Scriptures leave unanswered (cur alii, alii non – why some, not others) which end up compromising either God’s universal love or His sole responsibility for man’s salvation.
That is the Confessional Lutheran position at least as it is taught in the writings of the Missouri Lutherans – C. F. W. Walther, Francis Pieper, John Theodore Mueller, Robert D. Preuss, Kurt Marquart, John M. Drickamer, and Herman C. Otten – and what I have read of the Lutheran Confessions has given me no reason to think they are presenting it inaccurately. It has long struck me as being far more consistent with the freeness of God’s saving grace than either Calvinism or Arminianism. Calvinists must always be wondering if they belong to the select few God has chosen for salvation, and Arminians must always be wondering if their faith meets God’s requirements, but if God gives resistible grace-receiving-faith through the Gospel to all who hear it, then the troubled soul seeking assurance of salvation can leave these questions behind and look to the Gospel for grace, faith, and salvation. Indeed, apart from the sacraments and absolution being forms of the Gospel, this seems identical to what Zane Hodges taught – we are persuaded by the Gospel of the truth of God’s promise of salvation in Jesus Christ and when we are so convinced we believe, there is no decision, no act of the will, on our part that seals the deal.
The Lutherans would have disagreed with Hodges on justification being permanent upon conversion, and here my understanding of Scriptures is closer to Hodges’ than to the Lutherans, whereas I would agree with them against the free church position on the sacraments. I am myself an Anglican rather than a Lutheran. Dr. Packer I have described as a Puritan who thinks he is an Anglican. I have often thought that if I could go back in time and change anything in the history of the English church it would be to have the Marian exiles flee primarily to Lutheran rather than Calvinist areas in continental Europe, Lutheranism being both a sounder form of evangelical doctrine, and more consistent with the episcopal establishment than seditious, revolutionary, Calvinism. It has been observed by many that the Jacobean and Caroline divines who were accused of both Arminianism and crypo-Romanism by the Puritans – Archbishop Laud, John Cosin, Lancelot Andrewes for example – were guilty of neither and that their “Arminianism” consisted simply of a rejection of the harsh double predestination of Puritan Calvinism rather than an embrace of synergism.
Lastly, while I certainly agree with Shawn that everything must be check against the Bible, the final authority, the idea that tradition is a rigid chain that holds men in bondage is a modern notion, which philosopher Michael Oakeshott long ago demonstrated to be false. Tradition is living and fluid, it is the ideology that we are left with when tradition dries up that is inflexible and harsh. Tradition is a moving stream and the Bible is the font of the Christian tradition. Returning to the Bible is returning to the source of the stream for refreshment, since it periodically gets muddied up.
Alvin
Tradition is muddy water laced with poison. For instance the way the book of Romans is traditionally understood is that the salvation there is from hell, as also is the wrath. Tradition causes contradiction and confusion. I can only speak of my own experience in the Evangelical Free Church where tradition allows a smorgasbord of beliefs. The important thing being your “in Christ” even if you don’t believe in eternal security of the believer. This allows for Pastors to come into these Churches who are five point Calvinist. The idea put forward is that we don’t agree on everything, so we can work with this Pastor. Even when the Pastor says things like this…..’You can’t tell people that God loves them because His plan for them may be the eternal lake of fire, and you would be lying to them.’ This Pastor didn’t get in, but the elders of the church were in agreement to receive him because they didn’t even agree on everything? Later a Pastor filling in during a bible study looked at me and made the comment, ‘ Alvin I believe in eternal security but you can’t expect everyone to believe in eternal security.’ The leading elder of this church who was the rock on eternal security of the believer, during this time made known that he wasn’t even sure if he believed that doctrine? During this time I was doing a care center ministry, and having people pray the magic prayer inviting Jesus into their heart…more confusion. By the way, that leading Elder after this Pastor was rejected got up and explained five points of Arminianism, and five points of Calvinism. Saying that we all believed some of those points. Of course this made me look like a fool, especially when I started handing out books by Zane Hodges “Absolutely Free.” But, finally I got clear on the simple Gospel message, no thanks to tradition. Just think of how many have died thinking they were “in Christ,” but didn’t believe John 3:16~?
Gerry T. Neal
Nobody receives the Gospel message except as a tradition. The Holy Spirit says that quite clearly through Paul in 1 Corinthians 15:1-3 – the Gospel which he declared to the Corinthians and which they received (v. 1) he also had received (v. 3). That which you receive and pass on to someone else is a tradition (from traditus – the perfect passive participle of trado, tradere – to pass on). That which is passed down can be good or bad. The Roman doctrine of justification as infused rather than imputed righteousness is a bad tradition. So is the post-Dort Reformed tradition of the Atonement being limited to the elect. Justification by grace through faith alone is a good tradition. So is the assurance of salvation based solely upon the promise of the Gospel message. All four of these are traditions. No one who believes any of them today came up with them on their own. They have all been passed down from and through others. Even if nobody between Paul and Zane C. Hodges preached the clear Gospel of absolutely free salvation through faith in Jesus – and Zane Hodges, who filled the endnotes to his books with arguments drawn from expositors that preceded him would have been the first to denounce such a suggestion – those who came after him would have received it from him, making it a tradition. The first two are bad because the teaching passed on is a distortion of the teaching of the Scriptures. The latter two are good because they are supported by and clearly taught in the Scriptures. The Scriptures are the authority by which we judge traditions to be good or bad, not the mere fact of something being a tradition. That, incidentally, is the difference between the Reformers’ doctrine of sola Scriptura, and the perversion of that doctrine known as solo Scriptura.
Alvin
The tradition that I’m putting forth I think is pretty clear that causes contradiction and confusion:-)
Alvin
Romans 1:16-17 For I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ, since it is the power of God for deliverance for everyone who believes, both for the Jew and for the Greek. For in it is revealed the righteousness of God by faith, granted to faith, just as it is written, “Now the one who is righteous by faith shall live.” In the translation I give here, the word deliverance replaces the more familiar word salvation that is found in the English versions. The word salvation prejudices interpreters right from the start since it is traditionally understood as “salvation from hell.” But this is a presupposition which ought not to be made here on the basis of traditional understanding alone. The word deliverance properly leaves the issue open and almost automatically elicits the question, “deliverance from what?” No expositor ought to fail to address this question. An examination of the epistle to the Romans turns up the surprising fact that after Rom 1:16 the Greek word for deliverance or salvation (soteria) does not occur again until Rom 11:11 and the verbal form of this word (sozo) occurs next at Rom 5:9-10. Thus the noun and verb are totally absent from Paul’s discussion of justification in chaps. 2-4, even though, on the traditional view, this is where they would naturally appear. In addition, in Rom 5:9-10, the experience from which we are saved or delivered is specified as “wrath” (5:9). Although this word, too, has a traditional meaning (i.e., the wrath associated with hell), Paul’s epistle does not support this. In Romans wrath is a manifestation of God’s temporal displeasure. This is clear from 1:18ff. and 2:5-8. Given the close proximity of 1:16 to 1:18, and in the light of 5:9-10, we may conclude that in Rom 1:16 deliverance refers to being rescued, or “saved,” from the divine temporal anger that is so vividly described in Rom 1:18-32. (Zane page 35-36 Romans commentary)