I am responding to an article in the June 07 Banner of Truth magazine. It was written by Solano Portela and is entitled “A Sin That Threatens Calvinists-Spiritual Pride“. In reality, while I am responding to his article, I am also responding to Reformed theology as set out and practiced today and Evangelicalism as a whole.
The author of the article mentioned above has a very telling paragraph in his article. “Why can we have genuine fellowship with those who are not Calvinists? For one thing, if they are truly saved, we are brothers, children of the same sovereign God. Also even though we perceive inconsistencies in their theological structure; even though they may be proclaiming that salvation is the result of the supposed ‘free-will’ of man; in spite of all that, when they are on their knees to pray, when they are truly troubled and seeking for God, they forget their theology and pray to a sovereign Almighty God, who accomplishes his will; they pray to a God who is everything, acknowledging that they themselves are nothing.”
There are many problems with the above paragraph, but we don’t have the space to deal with them at length. We must ask what genuine fellowship is. Indeed fellowship in the biblical sense can only happen with true believers. But again the issue is over what the Gospel is and can one be a true believer apart from the one and true Gospel. There is a narrow gate and a narrow road if we are to believe what Jesus taught. Since I believe what Jesus taught I believe that the Gospel is a narrow gate and it is not love for God or man to make it appear wider than it really is.
I would like to get at one issue here before I go to the main one. The author seems to believe that a person will forget his theology when he goes to his knees to pray. I disagree totally. It is when a person is troubled and praying that the person’s real theology comes out. Perhaps some who wish to assert ‘free-will’ turn aside from their theology when they pray, but prayer is not possible apart from theology. It is not possible to pray apart from the deepest held beliefs of a person. If a person has bad theology, that person is not praying to the true God. We cannot pray to God unless we know who that God is. To pray through Christ is to pray to the revealed God in Christ.
The author then goes on to state something very amazing in light of historical theology. While I do not wish to appear bombastic, though I realize that this will sound like it, it appears that the author is willing to set aside what the Reformers thought was essential to the Gospel in order to be gracious and tolerant. While Luther thought that the denial of ‘free-will’ was essential to the Gospel, Mr. Portela does not. We are again back to the issue of what it means to be Reformed and what the heart of the Gospel really is. Again, I am not accusing Mr. Portela of being non-Reformed and non-Christian. I am simply going by what he has written. I am saying that Luther thought that one had to deny his own ‘free-will’ in order to be saved. It has been written several times that the Reformers were in step on this issue. The denial of free-will was at the heart of the Reformation and is at the heart of the Gospel.
We are at a huge divide here in terms of theology and of history. Let me give you a quote from the Historical Introduction to Luther’s Bondage of the Will. “Arminianism [semi-Pelagianism] was, indeed, in Reformed eyes a renunciation of New Testament Christianity in favour of New Testament Judaism; for 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). Do we see this point at all? In the eyes of the Reformers semi-Pelagianism (we call it Arminianism) was not even Christian. It was simply a return to a form of works for salvation that came from self even if it was less works than the Pelagians called for. This was Luther’s view and we should not apply the whitewash to it.
The writers then go on to say this: “These things need to be pondered by Protestants to-day. With what right may we call ourselves children of the Reformation? Much modern Protestantism would be neither owned nor even recognized by the pioneer Reformers. The Bondage of the Will fairly sets before us what they believed about the salvation of lost mankind. In the light of it, we are forced to ask whether Protestant Christendom has not tragically sold its birthright between Luther’s day and our own. Has not Protestantism to-day become more Erasmusian than Lutheran? Do we not too often try to minimize and gloss over doctrinal differences for the sake of inter-party peace? Are we innocent of the doctrinal indifferentism with which Luther charged Erasmus? Do we still believe that doctrine matters? Or do we now, with Erasmus, rater a deceptive appearance of unity as of more importance than truth?” We need to consider where the Church is at in these things. We need to ransack our hearts on this.
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