Responsibility, Inability and Grace
"All that the Father gives Me will come to Me..." - John 6:37
John Hendryx
The truth of God's word is honored not in holding exclusively to one truth to the exclusion of another truth, but in believing the whole counsel of God. The Bible plainly teaches that man is responsible to repent and believe the gospel just as it plainly teaches that he is morally unwilling and unable to do so. These two seemingly contradictory assertions can be reconciled when we understand that even the very desire for faith, by which we believe in Christ who justifies sinners, belongs to us, not by nature but by a gift of grace, that is, by the inspiration of the Holy Spirit amending our will and turning it from unbelief to faith and from godlessness to godliness. The Apostle Paul says, "And I am sure that he who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ" (Phil. 1:6). And again, "For by grace you have been saved through faith; and this is not of yourselves, it is the gift of God" (Eph. 2:8).
Furthermore some teach that God has mercy upon us when, apart from his regenerative grace, we believe, will and desire, but do not confess that it is by the work and inspiration of the Holy Spirit within us that we even have the faith, the will, or the desire to do all these things; If we make the assistance of grace depend on our humility or obedience but don't agree that it is a gift of grace itself that we are obedient and humble, we then contradict the Scripture which says, "What have you that you did not receive?" (1 Cor. 4:7), and, "But by the grace of God I am what I am" (1 Cor. 15:10).
The following chart shows that the Bible clearly teaches both man's responsibility to believe the gospel and his inability to do so. The third column helps us to understand how those whom God has set his affection on infallibly come to faith, in spite of this inability and, most of all, how this gives all glory to God in the work of salvation: Augustine once said, "God bids us do what we cannot, that we may know what we ought to seek from him."
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Matt. 11:28 |
John 6:44a |
John 6:44b |
| ...whoever believes in Him shall not perish, but have eternal life. John 3:16 | ...men loved the darkness rather than the Light...and will not come into the light... John 3:20, 21 | .."But he who practices the truth comes to the Light, so that his deeds may be manifested as having been wrought in God." John 3:21 Note: there are, indeed, those who come to the light -- namely those whose deeds are the work of God. "Wrought in God" means worked by God. Apart from this gracious work of God all men hate the light of God and will not come to him lest their evil be exposed. |
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Isa 55:6 |
Rom 3:11 |
Rom 10:20b |
| This is His commandment, that we believe in the name of His Son Jesus Christ... 1 John 3:23
| "...the sinful mind is hostile to God. It does not submit to God's law, nor can it do so. Romans 8:7 you do not hear, because you are not of God. John 8:47 | "...and these whom He called, He also justified; Rom 8:30 ...and as many as were ordained to eternal life believed. Acts 13:48 |
| God...commandeth all men every where to repent. Acts 17:30 | ...the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it neither sees Him nor knows Him John 14:7 | "...if perhaps God may grant them repentance leading to the knowledge of the truth." 2 Tim 2:25 |
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Rev 22:17b |
Rom 9:16a |
Ps 110:3a |
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Isa 45:22 |
John 3:3a |
Acts 22:14 |
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John 1:12 |
1 Cor 2:14 |
John 1:12-13 |
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ROM 10:9 |
1 Cor 12:3b |
1 Cor 12:3b |
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Ezek 18:31 |
Jer 17:9 |
Ezek 36:26 |
| "If you wish to be complete, go and sell your possessions and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; and come, follow Me." Matt 19:21 | "Again I say to you, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God."
| "Then who can be saved?" And looking at them Jesus said to them, "With people this is impossible, but with God all things are possible." Matt 25b-26 |
"God knoweth we have nothing of ourselves, therefore in the covenant of grace he requireth no more than he giveth, and giveth what he requireth, and accepteth what he giveth." - Richard Sibbes
8 comments:
Nice!
I think this chart does a fine job of showing the biblical stance on responsibility/inability/grace.
Somehow, many people get so involved in slinging around proof-texts that they seem unable to see the interplay and coherence of these three concepts within the Bible.
I think the Augustine quote is really good: "God bids us do what we cannot, that we may know what we ought to seek from him."
A person's who sees God as giving us an instruction and then leaving the ball in our court (with Him having done His part and now He waits for us to do ours) has, sad to say, an insufficiently Christian view of God. The "ball" has always been in God's court. Even look at the New Covenant promise in Jeremiah, its very monergistic... though, of course, it is not God "forcing" someone (as the cariciture of monergism goes), but instead it is God giving them a new heart--which loves obedience.
For the purpose of discussion and to present an opposing understanding, here's Nick's take on it:
Without the heavyhanded commentary beforehand and the term "Monergistic" in the third column, this would be a beautiful meditation on God's empowering grace.
Take the first example:
"No man can come to me, except the Father which hath sent me draw him: and I will raise him up at the last day." -John 6:44
So if the Father that sent Jesus draws him, man can come to me. What a powerful message! Man can come because God enables him to.
Instead, we see one more example here of a Reformed outlook implying that God working means that man is not working. The above passage can be read monergistically if you say that 'when the Father draws, man comes' (instead of 'when the Father draws, man can come').
I would also point out that this seems to be a reference (if veiled) to Jer 31:3. It's hard to express context in chart form.
Nick, your response to the first row does not negate the power of the collective whole of the scriptures presented, which are only a sampling of the supportive scriptures to monergistic salvation.
The Bible points to grace as so much more than just an "empowerment" so that man can be the decider of eternal fate. How can a dead man decide to live?
In response to Nick's comments, consider the follow two verses in John 6:
John 6:37 All that the Father gives me will come to me, and whoever comes to me I will never cast out.
John 6:44 - "No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him. And I will raise him up on the last day."
Ties those together, and you see that this passage must be read "monergistically".
Following the ideas presented in v37...Notice that there is a giving by the Father, which precedes the coming. And all the "given" ones do come and will never be cast out.
And v44 appears to further explain v37. Here we find that not only are the "given" absolutely certain to come, but we also learn that even their coming is dependant on the drawing of the Father. So, in summary, not only is the coming dependant on the "enabling" drawing of the Father, but there is also a previous "giving" which inevitably results in the coming.
Nick's objection would be plausible if there were no v37. In light of verse 37, it has no, or at least very little, weight.
wait wait wait...you're telling me reformed theology doesn't negate human responsibility?! oh man, now every argument i had against is shown to be a strawman. back to the drawing board i guess.
on a serious note, how hard is it to make it clear to an arminian that reformed doctrine teaches men are unable, not unresponsible. this is exactly what paul says in romans 9. he also anticipates the obvious objection to it of it being "unfair". why would he need to answer this objection if that was not what he was teaching? no one is going to say that about arminianism or pelagianism. how often do we teach a correct biblical view of salvation and election and then people raise the very same objections to it that paul answers after teaching it.
My apologies for this late response. I had tried to use the Google reader commenting thing and didn't know that you had posted my thought here.
Luke, please understand that I wasn't trying to imply that I had studied each verse in detail. I was merely trying to show that the chart didn't allow for context and seemed to find the viewpoint that it was looking for. I don't find the monergistic interpretation an impossible one, but it's not obvious nor necessary in the way the chart seems to imply that it must be. As I showed, there are other interpretations that are possible using the data that the chart does. I looked at the first row as an example.
Mark may be right that I was misunderstanding the verse. I don't think I am. But the approach taken by the creator of the chart isn't one I find particularly helpful.
Mark, I'm not following how monergism is implied here, even with verse 37.
We know that if we're not drawn, we can't come. So, we know that we can come if we are drawn. As you pointed out (via v37), if the Father gives them (I'll assume for the moment that he's referring to people) they will come and if they come they won't be cast out.
As you rightly pointed out, there's a giving before the coming. I don't disagree with that, nor does any non-Calvinist group I'm aware of. All know that the work of new creation, just as creation, always always always starts with God. But that doesn't necessarily imply monergism. God brings Israel to Zion, but no one (that I'm aware of) would say that Israel didn't come to Zion. The movement, the working is attributed to both, even though God is working through it.
In other words, there's no problem with God -erging all. In fact, it is only because God -ergs us that we can -erg. But of course, since we are not God, it's not just mono -erging.
Traever, good reformed theology doesn't (and musn't) ever negate human responsibility, and I pray that you get a chance to preach that to everyone who would dare take up the title. It's a message and a distinction that helps the discussion along quite a bit, I think.
Oh, and just one more thing. Taking individual verses and boiling them down to a series of propositions as is being done here seems very problematic (let alone downright unhelpful). God didn't send us a tome of systematic theology. If you need such an approach to make sense of your question, it seems to me likely that you're asking the wrong question, or just using the wrong mindset.
Nick,
You said "God brings Israel to Zion, but no one (that I'm aware of) would say that Israel didn't come to Zion"
Monergism doesn't deny coming in that sense. It denies a particular vision of how coming occurs.
You also said "Taking individual verses and boiling them down to a series of propositions as is being done here seems very problematic (let alone downright unhelpful). God didn't send us a tome of systematic theology."
That is a good point, and well taken. On the other hand, what you are saying (and I'm not saying this is your approach) can be misused to avoid what these propositions actually say. The Bible may not be a tome systematic theology persay, but it is a set of propositions.
Mark,
Could you clarify the first point? I'm wondering what I misunderstood about Monergism.
It's possible that I'm saying too much in these above paragraphs, though at the moment, I don't really see the danger. To say that God can work in and through man, and that in that working man becomes true Man, and subsequently works (the result being both divine and human)...this might seem fantastic, but it is little more than the Incarnation (ie communicatio idiomatum).
Personally, I think that there's far more danger in the language of the Reformed that is often misused to produce a very mechanistic interpretation of the working of God and of man, let alone of Scripture. This is why I pointed out the danger of assuming that kind of propositional knowledge. As I've noted before, I have rather little problem with solid Reformed theology, which denies any sort of Cartesian approach to God or man, that preserves the dignity of man as well as his responsibility for his sin, and that recognize the Church as the appropriate place of the theologian (as well as his theology). My concern is rather with those many situations where these propositions are left in a vacuum where the possibility of free will (even with God's grace) is vehemently denied, any sort of purpose or goal is stripped from life (under the pretense that this implies that we can achieve them "on our own"), and where each individual has granted themselves far more authority over spiritual truth than any Pope ever claimed (mostly stemming from some hermeneutic of obviousness in their interpretation of Scripture).
When it comes to people avoiding what these propositions "actually say", I think you'd find that most argue over interpretations of those passages, each claiming to have the correct answer. And this largely stems from a people who don't know how to read. If I say "God saved Israel", you can look at that and say that Israel was an active participant in that saving and some would say that Israel was static as God tossed it back and forth. The former sounds more like a person, the latter sounds more like a stone, and it seems to me that Israel is far more like a man than a stone. But there is truth in each of those statements. It helps me, though, when I remember that this reasoning doesn't put Jesus first and foremost, and of course Jesus is far more man than stone.
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