The Heart of the Calvinist-Arminian Divide
Chapters
0:01:16 How Do You Address Prevenient Grace
3:13 Previant Grace
6:12 Partial Regeneration
00:00:00.000 | Hello again, thank you for listening to Ask Pastor John, the game show where we try to
00:00:07.460 | stump John Piper into confused silence seven years in, and it hasn't happened yet. I'm
00:00:13.780 | your host, Tony Reike, trying to do it. Pastor John, today's question will, of course, prompt
00:00:18.180 | a lot of thoughts for you, namely about the distinction between Calvinism and Arminianism
00:00:22.440 | when it comes to the power of God's grace. As listeners may know, you are hoping to finish
00:00:27.500 | up this summer writing a big new book on God's providence. So I know these questions about
00:00:33.380 | God's sovereignty are on the front of your mind already. Here's the email.
00:00:37.580 | "Hello, Pastor John. I'm a 26-year-old man in full-time ministry working primarily with
00:00:41.540 | collegiate golfers. In a recent Bible study, one of the older men in our group brought
00:00:46.200 | up the topic of 'prevenient grace,' the idea that the Holy Spirit enables everyone to potentially
00:00:51.880 | believe if they choose to cooperate. I was unprepared in the moment to respond. I am
00:00:58.300 | Reformed and believe wholly in the sovereignty of God and salvation. I believe we are saved
00:01:03.320 | by grace through faith, and this faith is not our own doing but is rather a gift of
00:01:07.960 | God coming to the elect from outside of us, all according to Ephesians 2.8. But I was
00:01:14.100 | really unprepared to respond in that moment. I'd love to hear your answer. How do you address
00:01:18.900 | 'prevenient grace?'"
00:01:21.940 | There are two very different views of how God's grace functions in bringing people from
00:01:30.660 | spiritual darkness and deadness and unbelief into the light and life and faith which we
00:01:39.720 | call salvation and union with Christ. And if it helps, you can call the one view "Arminianism,"
00:01:48.700 | because one of its early and foremost advocates was Jacob Arminius, and you can call the other
00:01:54.540 | view—the one I'm going to argue for—"Calvinism," because one of its foremost advocates was
00:02:02.820 | John Calvin. But the names "Arminianism" and "Calvinism" are not important in comparison
00:02:10.940 | to what's really at stake, and that is one of them more biblical, is one of them more
00:02:16.540 | biblical than the other. Now, both of these views agree that until the grace of God is
00:02:25.300 | active and powerful in the human heart, there is only deadness and rebellion and unbelief,
00:02:33.340 | with no possibility of man bringing about the changes in his own heart that are necessary
00:02:40.240 | for salvation. We need to get that clear, because sometimes Calvinists don't describe
00:02:45.220 | Arminianism correctly there. Historic Arminianism agrees with Calvinism that fallen man, apart
00:02:55.580 | from special grace, cannot give himself life or produce his own faith. The difference lies
00:03:05.260 | in what this divine grace does in the human heart and how it relates to the will of man.
00:03:14.340 | So "prevenient grace," which is what we're being asked about, "prevenient grace" is
00:03:20.580 | a phrase used by Arminians usually to describe the work of God's grace prior to faith—hence
00:03:31.060 | the word "prevenient," coming before—and without which faith would not be possible.
00:03:39.220 | That's what an Arminian would say. So let me read some words from a prominent Arminian
00:03:45.660 | theologian, Roger Olson, from his book Against Calvinism, to make sure that I express the
00:03:54.500 | view fairly. I want you to hear the very words of Dr. Olson as a historic, faithful, insightful
00:04:05.060 | Arminian, and here's what he says. Everything I say now is going to be a quote until I tell
00:04:11.420 | you otherwise. "If anyone comes to Christ with repentance and faith, it is only because
00:04:19.220 | they are enabled by God's prevenient grace to do so." Page 66. Another quote. "Arminianism
00:04:28.620 | has always insisted that the initiative in salvation is God's. It is called 'prevenient
00:04:36.620 | grace' and is enabling but resistible." Page 169. Another quote. "Wesley affirmed original
00:04:48.020 | sin, including total depravity, in the sense of spiritual helplessness, but he also affirmed
00:04:56.180 | God's universal gift"—so everybody gets this—"universal gift of prevenient or enabling
00:05:04.640 | grace that restores freedom of the will." Page 129. Another quote. "Classical Arminian
00:05:13.760 | theology attributes the sinner's ability to respond to the gospel with repentance and
00:05:21.080 | faith to 'prevenient grace.'" Now let me insert a comment here. Just to be clear, he
00:05:27.040 | says the ability to respond is given with prevenient grace, but it's an ability to
00:05:32.580 | believe or not to believe, and he'll make that really plain in just a minute. Continuing
00:05:37.960 | the quote now. "The illuminating, convicting, calling, enabling power of the Holy Spirit
00:05:45.320 | working in the sinner's soul makes them free to choose saving grace or reject it."
00:05:55.800 | Page 67. So prevenient grace brings one out of bondage to the point where you can receive
00:06:04.640 | or reject the work of God in your heart. Another quote. "So in Arminian theology, a partial
00:06:13.800 | regeneration"—now this is his phrase, I didn't know this phrase until I read this—"a
00:06:20.040 | partial regeneration does precede conversion, but it's not a complete regeneration. It
00:06:28.400 | is an awakening and enabling, but not an irresistible force. Prevenient grace is God's powerful,
00:06:38.680 | connecting, and persuading power that actually imparts free will to be saved or not." Page
00:06:48.720 | 171. Now that's the end of my quotation, so that you could hear how a historic Arminian
00:06:56.320 | would describe their own understanding of prevenient grace. Those are all quotations.
00:07:04.240 | And the question is whether that understanding of how grace works to bring about our faith
00:07:12.040 | is biblical, or whether the Calvinist view is biblical, which says God's grace doesn't
00:07:20.320 | just bring us up to a point in a "partial regeneration"—that's his term—and then
00:07:28.720 | stop and leave the outcome to our ultimate self-determination. Now that's my term,
00:07:37.200 | ultimate self-determination. Olson doesn't use that. I think it's fair, and I think
00:07:42.480 | it's right, in trying to get across the fact that man, not God, does the final and
00:07:52.840 | the ultimately decisive act. I know that the word "decisive" is a little slippery,
00:08:00.880 | and I'm trying to be clear and fair. Ultimately decisive. The very final act that brings me
00:08:08.560 | into Christ is that decisive moment in conversion is one that I perform, not God. Now let me
00:08:19.160 | tell you, Calvinism says that God does more in our conversion. Namely, he overcomes all
00:08:29.240 | of our resistance and opens the eyes of our hearts to make Christ so real and so beautiful
00:08:39.920 | and so compelling that our will gladly embraces Christ as our Savior and Lord and treasure.
00:08:48.000 | So the question is, which of those is the biblical view of how God's grace brings
00:08:54.880 | us to faith and salvation? Does it make us free to choose grace or reject it? Or does
00:09:03.080 | it overcome our rebellion and blindness so that we are drawn triumphantly by the beauty
00:09:10.520 | of Christ to embrace what is true and real? Now, as you ponder which of these two views
00:09:21.320 | is biblical and you search the Scriptures, I would just point to one passage—and we
00:09:27.520 | could point to others, but just to save time, I'll point to one passage of Scripture that
00:09:34.840 | I think shows the complete saving effectiveness of God's grace and that God provides more
00:09:46.360 | than a partial regeneration in order to bring us to faith. And that passage is Ephesians
00:09:53.120 | 2, verses 4 through 7. So let me read it. "God, being rich in mercy because of the
00:10:01.980 | great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses," and now
00:10:11.600 | comes two verbs of what God, being rich in mercy, does. Number one, "made us alive
00:10:22.800 | together with Christ." That's what he does for dead sinners. He made us alive with
00:10:32.700 | Christ, not just alive to reject Christ, but alive with Christ. And then he adds this parenthetical
00:10:42.820 | phrase, "By grace you have been saved," in order to show, I think, what grace actually
00:10:47.800 | does. It makes us alive with Christ. And then here's the second verb, "and raised
00:10:55.960 | us up with him." He made us alive together with Christ, and he raised us up. So he brings
00:11:02.860 | us alive out of the grave of our fallenness, and he raises us up with Christ, seats us
00:11:09.100 | in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, so that in the coming ages he might show the
00:11:13.940 | immeasurable riches of his grace and kindness toward us in Christ Jesus. I don't think
00:11:19.980 | that text can be fairly interpreted to mean that there is a split in regeneration or a
00:11:28.420 | split in making alive, and he does part of it, and then he waits to see what we will
00:11:33.140 | do with the rest of it if we will finish the making alive and bringing ourselves into union
00:11:40.580 | with Christ. I don't think that will work. And so the difference between me—and I think
00:11:48.300 | I speak for virtually all Calvinists on this point, and Arminians—is not that one believes
00:11:55.880 | in total depravity and the other doesn't. No, that's not it. And it's not—the
00:12:00.860 | difference is not that one believes that grace must precede faith and the other doesn't.
00:12:06.820 | No, no, that's not the difference either. Rather, that I believe what God's saving
00:12:13.580 | grace does is not merely restore a kind of free will that can accept or reject Christ,
00:12:24.040 | but rather opens our blind eyes, grants us to see the compelling truth and beauty and
00:12:31.660 | worth of Jesus in such a way that we find him irresistible, and so gladly and willingly
00:12:41.820 | embrace him as our Savior and Lord and treasurer. He brings us all the way to the point of conversion
00:12:51.660 | so that we give him all the glory for our receiving of Jesus.
00:12:57.660 | Amen. Made alive in Christ, made alive to Christ, and all to the glory of his sovereign
00:13:03.300 | grace. Thank you, Pastor John, for outlining one of the key differences here. And if this
00:13:07.900 | is all rather new to you and you want to better understand Calvinism in general, see Pastor
00:13:13.060 | John's book titled "Five Points." You can download the 100-page book free of charge
00:13:18.780 | right now. Go to DesiringGod.org/books and look for the title "Five Points." Spelled
00:13:24.980 | out F-I-V-E, five points, and you'll find it there.
00:13:28.260 | Well, as you can imagine, we get a lot of questions about what it means to live as a
00:13:32.180 | child of God. How does God's disposition change towards us? And specifically, is God angry
00:13:39.260 | at his children when they sin? Is God angry at me when I sin? That's on Wednesday when
00:13:46.100 | we return. It's a great question. I'm your host, Tony Reinke. We'll see you then.
00:13:49.620 | [END]
00:13:50.120 | 1. What is God's disposition towards us? 2. What is God's disposition towards us? 3.
00:13:51.120 | What is God's disposition towards us? 4. What is God's disposition towards us? 5. What
00:13:52.120 | is God's disposition towards us? 6. What is God's disposition towards us? 7. What
00:13:53.120 | is God's disposition towards us? 8. What is God's disposition towards us? 9. What is
00:13:54.120 | God's disposition towards us? 10. What is God's disposition towards us? 11. What is
00:13:55.120 | God's disposition towards us? 12. What is God's disposition towards us? 13. What is
00:13:56.120 | God's disposition towards us? 14. What is God's disposition towards us? 15. What is
00:13:57.120 | God's disposition towards us? 16. What is God's disposition towards us? 17. What is
00:13:58.120 | God's disposition towards us? 18. What is God's disposition towards us? 19. What is God's