Last week at the Free Grace Alliance conference, this was the best-selling book. Let me give you a summary of it from Dr. Kerrey.

Purpose

The purpose of this work is to seek a better answer to the question: how does God draw people to believe in Jesus? That God does in fact draw people to believe is clear and conceded. Jesus himself makes the point in John 6:44: “No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him” (ESV, emphasis added).[1]

How Does God Draw People to Believe in Jesus is available in Amazon.

What is unclear and widely contested, however, is just exactly how and when God draws us, and what our part is in the process. Arguments have traditionally boiled down to differences regarding the logical order of elements involved in salvation, otherwise known as the ordo salutis. Specifically, at issue is whether faith precedes or follows regeneration in which God gives new life.

The Faith-After-Regeneration View

Those who argue that faith follows regeneration are traditionally described as having a Calvinist or Reformed point of view.[2] Nevertheless, for the sake of clarity and confining the argument, I will call this the faith-after-regeneration view. This is a more helpful label because Calvinism and Reformed theology encompass more than just the order of faith and regeneration.[3] Moreover, some who identify themselves with Calvinism and Reformed theology do not agree on the order of these two elements.[4]

A summary of the faith-after-regeneration view is this: because of the total depravity of humankind, God must regenerate a person first for that person to believe. Moreover, having been regenerated, that person will certainly believe because faith itself is a gift from God tied to regeneration. As such, God’s grace in drawing those he has chosen is traditionally described as irresistible. This view is deterministic in the sense that there is no genuine human freedom which permits a person to choose freely between two options—to accept or reject, to believe or disbelieve—because God determines.[5] People play no role whatsoever in regeneration. In effect, there is no human freedom or ability to respond to God; God does it all. A person cannot be persuaded to believe; he must be made to believe by God.[6] That’s how God draws.[7]

The Faith-Before-Regeneration View

In contrast, those who argue that faith precedes regeneration are often associated with Arminianism. Nevertheless, for the sake of clarity and confining the argument, I will call this the faith-before-regeneration view. Again, this is a more helpful label because, like Calvinism, Arminianism encompasses more than just the order of faith and regeneration. Moreover, many who hold that faith precedes regeneration (including some moderate Calvinists, dispensationalists, traditionalists, and free-grace proponents) would not be comfortable wearing the “Arminian” label because it implies assent to some other Arminian doctrines to which they do not subscribe.

The faith-before-regeneration view argues that God’s regeneration is logically conditioned upon a person’s prior faith. In this way of thinking, people do play a role in regeneration: they must believe before God will regenerate them. Moreover, the person who comes to faith has some ability and responsibility to believe prior to regeneration, subject to God’s initiative and help.

Within the faith-before-regeneration camp, however, there is some disagreement about the nature and extent of both our ability to believe and God’s initiative in bringing us to faith.

The Arminian View

The Arminian view generally argues that, by the universally bestowed prevenient grace of God, everyone has the freedom and capacity to believe. It is through this prevenient grace that God draws everyone, and it is entirely up to the individual to accept or resist. The Arminian view is nondeterministic in the sense that a person is considered to have genuine freedom and ability to choose freely between two options, to believe or disbelieve. According to this view, the grace of God in drawing people to believe is resistible.

This Arminian view is generally accompanied by the belief that once a person is regenerated he or she can lose eternal salvation by turning away from Christ.[8] Since eternal salvation is conditioned on faith, it is believed that eternal security must likewise be conditioned on continuing faith.[9]

The Modified View

Others in the faith-before-regeneration camp hold a view that lies somewhere between the determinism of Calvinism, in which humans play no role whatsoever in their eternal salvation, and the nondeterminism of Arminianism, in which humans can freely check in and out of eternal salvation according to their faith decisions. This has been called a modified view or middle way because it is in some ways like Calvinism and in other ways like Arminianism.[10] It will be identified as the modified view in this work.[11]

Like Calvinism, the modified view holds that people are unable to believe in Jesus apart from some kind of enablement from God that leads to faith. The difference is in what the special enablement actually is. In the Calvinist view, the special enablement is regeneration; in the modified view, the special divine enablement is something else, such as an effectual call or divine illumination, which will be discussed later.

Like Arminianism, the modified view holds that faith precedes regeneration. Unlike Arminians, modified view proponents generally do not use the term, “prevenient grace” to describe God’s enablement to believe, even though the enabling grace in the modified view seems to overlap the Arminian idea of prevenient grace in some ways. Also, those who hold a modified view generally do not hold to the Arminian idea that once regenerated, a person can lose eternal salvation.

The modified view can be further divided into two camps, deterministic and nondeterministic. I have found these designations to be helpful, although they are not commonly used in the theological literature.

The Deterministic Modified View

According to the deterministic modified view, while God does extend a common grace to all, we remain unable to believe apart from a special or effectual calling of God. God effectually calls only those whom he chooses according to his sovereign will, and those whom he calls will believe. In the ordo salutis, there is an irresistible effectual call leading to faith and then regeneration.

Those who hold this view generally have Reformed leanings but are persuaded by biblical evidence to break ranks with most Calvinists by believing that faith comes before regeneration, not after. This view remains deterministic, however, in the sense that the effectual call is unilaterally and unconditionally given by God to the elect who will surely believe because the call is irresistible.[12]

The Nondeterministic Modified View

According to the nondeterministic modified view, God draws people to believe in various ways that fall under the rubric of divine illumination or divine enablement or divine persuasion. While this divine illumination is essential—no one can believe without it—it can be resisted. All have some capacity and responsibility to respond to God’s illumination, and as they do, God draws by giving more light leading to faith. In response to God’s illumination, people have a genuine choice between two alternatives, to believe or disbelieve.[13]

[1] As evident in this first paragraph, divine pronouns will generally not be capitalized in this work, consistent with the English Standard Version of the Bible used throughout. Some exceptions occur when quoting authors who do use such capitalization.

[2] The terms “Calvinist” and “Reformed” will be used interchangeably.

[3] It is worth noting that Oliver Crisp, a Calvinist, contends that while the famous five points of Calvinism (total depravity, unconditional election, limited atonement, irresistible grace, and perseverance of the saints—acronym T.U.L.I.P.) summarize much of Reformed thought, the Reformed “tent” is historically bigger, including a broader spectrum of thinking than the narrower modern version may imply. See Oliver D. Crisp, Saving Calvinism: Expanding the Reformed Tradition (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2016), 11-23.

[4] An example is Bruce Demarest, who holds a faith-before-regeneration view, but describes his position as “Reformed” in Bruce Demarest, The Cross and Salvation (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 1997), 289.

[5] Reformed theologian, Richard A. Muller has recently argued that modern Reformed writers in the line of Jonathan Edwards who advocate determinism or compatibilism are not necessarily representative of historical Reformed orthodoxy, which he says is not philosophically or metaphysically deterministic. At the same time, he admits that in soteriological matters Reformed orthodox theology teaches that human beings have no power to choose or refuse the gift of saving grace. As such, in soteriological matters, Reformed theology remains deterministic and this is still an accurate label for the faith-after-regeneration view. See Richard A. Muller, Divine Will and Human Choice: Freedom, Contingency, and Necessity in Early Modern Reformed Thought (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2017), 19-22, 322-323.

[6] Many faith-after-regeneration proponents would be quick to point out that the regenerate person “freely” chooses to believe and is not coerced. Nevertheless, in Reformed thinking, God creates a regenerate person who not only desires to believe, but also will believe, must believe, and could not do otherwise. So, in this view, faith is essentially manufactured.

[7] Some notable modern proponents of the faith-after-regeneration view who are cited in this work include: Matthew Barrett, D. A. Carson, Wayne Grudem, John MacArthur, J. I. Packer, John Piper, Thomas Schreiner, Mark Snoeberger, R. C. Sproul, and James White. Not everyone who holds this view may agree with every aspect of my characterization of it, but I have tried to provide a fair generalization.

[8] Most but not all who hold the Arminian view believe that eternal salvation can be lost. Arminian Roger Olson says, “I think one can believe in ‘once saved, always saved’ (inamissable grace) and be a good Arminian” (Ben Witherington and Roger Olson, “Roger Olson’s Arminian Theology—Part 7,” Society of Evangelical Arminians, November 11, 2016, accessed November 3, 2017, http://evangelicalarminians.org/ben-witherington-and-roger-olson-roger-olsons-arminian-theology-part-7/).

[9] Some notable modern proponents of the Arminian view who are cited in this work include: Brian Abasciano, F. Leroy Forlines, Thomas Oden, Roger Olson, and W. Brian Shelton. Again, not everyone who holds this view may agree with every aspect of my characterization of it, but I have tried to provide a fair generalization. (Some may not even accept the label Arminian, but generally hold to its tenets.)

[10] Matthew Barrett, Salvation by Grace: The Case for Effectual Calling and Regeneration (Phillipsburg, NJ: P&R Publishing, 2013), xxiii-xxv, 283.

[11] “Modified” was chosen instead of “middle” so as not to confuse this with the middle knowledge associated with Molinism.

[12] Some notable modern proponents of the deterministic modified view who are cited in this work include: Lewis Sperry Chafer, R. Bruce Compton, Bruce Demarest, Millard Erickson, Gordon Lewis, Robert Pyne, and John Walvoord. Again, not everyone who holds this view may agree with every aspect of my characterization of it, but I have tried to provide a fair generalization.

[13] Some notable modern proponents of the nondeterministic modified view who are cited in this work include: David Allen, David Anderson, Charles Bing, Fred Chay, Joseph Dillow, Leighton Flowers, Norman Geisler, Eric Hankins, Zane Hodges, Steve Lemke, George Meisinger, Earl Radmacher, and Robert Wilkin. Again, not everyone who holds this view may agree with every aspect of my characterization of it, but I have tried to provide a fair generalization.

I think you’ll really enjoy this book. You can order it on Amazon.

 

Serving Him with you until He comes for us,
Fred Chay, PhD
Managing Editor, Grace Theology Press