Consider the Flowers: Tulip, Daisy, or Dandelion? Part 2

A Missio-Botanical Journey

by Dr. Stephen M. Davis

Read Part 1.
Where does this discussion lead me? After much thought over the years, much reading (without claiming to have read all the extant literature on the subject), and many heated arguments, I am coming to some conclusions. I say “coming” only because, while settled and absolutely committed to the fundamentals of the faith, I am still on a theological journey in this area. A change in my reading habits has had a major impact on my thinking. For years most of what I read about Arminians was written by Calvinists and vice versa. On both sides were inaccuracies, exaggerations, straw men, quotes out of context—to say nothing of the not-infrequent invective and vituperative language. One position is a slippery slope to liberalism and universalism; one has a higher view of God; one exalts free will; one defends God’s sovereignty; one is doxological; one is soteriological; and both invoke mystery when needed. A fairly recent egregious example of this conflict can be seen in a highly respected self-described Calvinist and seminary president’s statement at a pastors’ conference that “it is not by accident that there are not great Armenian [sic] testimonies to the inerrancy of Scripture.” Wow! I wonder if he has read Arminius or Wesley or a host of present-day Arminians who affirm verbal, plenary inspiration along with the absolute authority and inerrancy of Scripture.

One of the burning questions to which each system gives different answers concerns divine sovereignty and human freedom, how to understand them, and how they relate to each other. Tomes have been written on the subject, yet the tension has never been resolved—and will not be resolved due to this essay. Some might consider the question settled in stating that one system believes in divine sovereignty and the other in human freedom. One is based on grace and the other on works. One brings greater glory to God, and the other exalts man. One is pessimistic and the other optimistic. I strongly doubt we can reduce the matter to these charges. Yet on a practical level we might ask ourselves, as I did, after we are assured to be part of the elect, “Why me? Why did God save me out of the mass of humanity? Why did I respond to the Good News when others have not? Why did I even have the opportunity to hear when many seem to be denied that privilege?” We might simply respond that salvation was by God’s grace and not by any merit of our own—which is true—and leave the matter there.

Ah, if only we could leave it there, but we cannot. Something drives us to inquire. Both Calvin and Arminius, along with hosts of their followers, have affirmed the supremacy of God’s grace and on this can agree. How God’s grace operates in the human condition remains a subject of debate. Calvinists disagree among themselves on the order of pre-creation decrees (ordo salutis) and on whether regeneration precedes faith or on whether they occur simultaneously. Yet they agree that God foreordained a limited number of individuals to eternal life for whom Christ died, and many agree that Christ died intentionally only for the elect. The human response to the offer of salvation is viewed as compatible with God’s elective decree, a response not only enabled by the Holy Spirit but also made irresistibly certain. However, we should preach the gospel to all because we do not know who the elect are. The non-elect, according to various viewpoints, are those whom God in His good pleasure and for reasons unknown to us has either passed over or foreordained to eternal destruction before the foundation of the world. The sovereign God is under obligation to save no one. That He saves some is a demonstration of His grace and love.

Arminians generally see the human response as foreknown by God, but not deterministically ordained; and affirm that God’s foreknowledge, while making future events certain, does not make them necessary. In other words, the fact that God knows some would be saved did not, in and by itself, determine their salvation since God has determined to save all those who repent and believe the gospel. Christ died for all, and salvation is genuinely and freely offered to all. The atonement is unlimited in intention and limited only in that it is efficacious only for those who believe. Human response to the divine offer is not a work. It is simply non-resistance to prevenient grace, the work of the Holy Spirit, which short of regeneration brings conviction of sin, demonstrates the need for the Savior, and divinely enables the hearer to respond. Although prevenient grace may be irresistible in the sense that the Holy Spirit brings a measure of conviction and opportunity to all who hear the Word of God, there is a point where one may respond affirmatively or negatively to the wooing of the Spirit. This response does not deny divine sovereignty since it is God, both sovereign and loving, who chose to work in this way; and no one comes to Him without the divine initiative.

This brief overview cannot flesh out the complexities and variations of the two positions, and I hope I do not misrepresent either in drawing broad strokes. Better expositors than I have marshaled texts for their respective positions and can be consulted for more exactitude. Although I eschew either label, be it “Calvinist” or “Arminian,” I am not bereft of theological foundations or sinking in the sands of uncertainty. I submit myself to Sola gratia, Sola fide, Sola scriptura, Solo Christo, Soli Deo gloria—by grace alone, through faith alone, on the Word alone, in Christ alone, to God’s glory alone—along with all Calvinists and Arminians who affirm the same. My struggle is more with logical implications inherent in all human theological systems that are elevated to a degree of certainty unwarranted by Scripture. Where I struggle is with the soteriological elitism and occiocentricism of any theological system that claims to be the one and only true representative of biblical Christianity and that fails to recognize both the historical particularities of its system and the extremes in forcing a system on the text of Scripture.

As a non-Calvinist, non-Arminian, holding a non-position position if you will, untenable for many I imagine, here is what I believe represents the best—biblically speaking—of both systems of thought, which in the minds of some may seem to push me in one direction or another. I believe we violate the clear teaching of God’s Word when we sacrifice the clear intentions of His love and grace for “all” and for the “world” and abuse language to prove a point. Some will ask if that statement means “all without exception” or “all without distinction,” “the world of all humanity” or the “world of the elect.” If I have to answer those questions, then you have not understood what I have been saying; and a predisposition has already been read into the text. But the questions arise: How could Peter possibly say that “God is not willing that any should perish” (2 Pet. 3:9) if in fact it was not His intention that Christ die for all? How could Paul possibly call the Lord Jesus “the Savior of all men, especially to those who believe” if there was neither desire on God’s part nor possibility on man’s part for the salvation of “whosoever will”? How is that that some will not, cannot tell a person that “God loves them” or that “Christ died for them” since they are not sure that God does or Christ did? Does the Bible restrain them from speaking in this way? Why the hesitation to declare fully and clearly to all without reservation the glorious gospel of Christ Jesus? The declaration of those who say that claiming that Christ died for all trivializes the atonement makes no sense scripturally. When making this claim, one may marshal support that Christ died “for many” (Matt. 26:28) or “loved the church and gave himself up for her” (Eph. 5:25). The claim can be made only by ignoring those passages that speak of God’s love for the “world” (John 3:16) and Christ’s death for all (1 John 2:2) and by ignoring Romans 5:12-18, which seems to speak interchangeably of the “many” and the “all.” [2] I’m not necessarily looking for new answers to these questions. I’ve read human responses to them for years. I am content to live with some epistemological ambiguity and unresolved or irresolvable theological tension.

So why did God save me and not others? I do not really know and cannot fully understand. “I know not why God’s wondrous grace to me He has made known.” Where the divine and human meet remains beyond human knowledge and appears irreconcilable, at least in this lifetime. As I stand at a Paris Metro stop with others, singing and passing out tracts, I have no idea, apart from God’s work of grace, why some stop and listen, why some pass by indifferently, why others mock. I do not know how God has been working in their lives and at what point they may be in that work. Most of them will say no to God and reject the gospel, and none of them will come to Christ without the divine initiative. They will choose to remain in rebellion against God and reap the consequences of their rejection. They will go to hell and receive what they chose, removed forever from the presence of the One for whom they had no place. God in His justice gives them what they deserve in having rejected His love and the Son of His love and for having spurned the gracious offer of forgiveness of sins and eternal life.

Yet I am not biblically persuaded that God determined they could not be saved and ordained that Christ would die only for a pre-selected number and for them alone. I’m also not persuaded that they chose to reject God and go to hell because they could not have done otherwise. God does not dangle before sinners the outward offer of salvation when in fact they were never included or were even outright excluded from His plan and cannot respond because God has so decided. We may live with the ambiguous, paradoxical nature of divine sovereignty and human freedom. We must live in obedience to the Word and seek to make Christ known. God knows those who are His! The tension between divine sovereignty and human responsibility may never be relieved and should be ironically debated, but neither truth should be denied in order to sustain the supposed coherency of one system or another at the expense of the integrity of God. On one hand, you do not need to abandon your interpretative system unless you are scripturally convinced that you must. On the other hand, you do not need to so firmly grip a system that even Scripture cannot convince you of your imbalance.

Here’s the truth, of course, as I see it at this time, perhaps not as it really is. Neither Calvinism nor Arminianism is thoroughly convincing as an all-encompassing theological system. Both positions have much to commend them although that statement cannot be said for all Calvinists and Arminians. I think both are valid, occidental theological systems that arose out of historical particularities and that have truths that need to be heard. They remain, however, fallible, theological traditions and must never be equated with divine revelation. They may explain divine truth, but they can never become substitutes for it. At the same time, I think both systems have elements that cannot be sustained biblically but arise out of the logic of the system and fail at some points to express biblical truth. In following the logic, not that everyone would, some inferences are frankly disturbing, not to say repugnant, and unintentionally misrepresent God as revealed in Jesus Christ.

Please do not misunderstand me. I do believe that in spite of all that evangelical Calvinists and evangelical Arminians have in common (final authority of Scripture, Trinity, deity of Christ, bodily resurrection of Christ, etc.), there are serious and unbridgeable differences. There are differences between unconditional election and conditional election, irresistible grace and resistible grace, compatibilist free will and libertarian free will, atonement universal in sufficiency but intended only for the elect and atonement intended for all but efficacious only for those who believe—to say nothing of the decrees including Calvin’s “horrible degree.” These differences are real and significant. They won’t go away. The divergent views appear to each group to be backed by sound exegesis. If someone in defining election says, “God chose to save in Jesus Christ all those He foreknew would come to salvation through grace alone and faith alone,” and someone else says, “God chose before the foundation of the world according to His good pleasure to save a limited number of persons from the mass of humanity and to pass over the rest (or predestine the others to damnation),” they are not saying the same thing. You cannot affirm both statements. Or if you think you can, you will fail in harmonizing the implications.

What’s the point? However we might differ on the kind of world God has created, how He governs it, the exercise of His sovereignty, and the plan God has chosen to call out a people for His name, we ought to stop speaking of the other group, whichever group that might be, as if it has departed from the truth. In reality, it may be that they are both seeking to defend God’s nature and honor from a different starting point. I am not saying that both sides can be right. Neither position has exclusive claims on truth. If you feel you must choose a label, you cannot be a Calvinist and an Arminian at the same time. And it seems that for the sake of clarity at times we choose a label or have one thrust upon us.

Frankly after all these years, I hesitate to choose either label, yet I realize that even if I call myself a “Biblicist” or a “Dandelion,” I am leaning in one direction or the other and that my views are more in line with one system and opposed to another. What becomes wearisome is the unvarnished caricatures of each system by its opponents. When I read Calvin, I find him at times much more balanced than many who bear his name. When I read Arminius, I find much to embrace and little, at least at this point, to condemn. Both Calvin and Arminius were children of their time, battling issues when truth was at stake. Both sincerely sought to articulate biblical truth. Both had incomplete knowledge and were either in error or in ignorance on some questions. With the passing of time, both have been misrepresented badly at times by some who claim to follow their teaching. It is not my intention either to exonerate or to exalt either man or to bring a halt to healthy debate that sheds greater light on what we believe. My commitment is to Jesus Christ and to His gospel, to preaching Christ and Him crucified, to say, “Whosoever will, come!” without a worrisome insistence on a preferred order of decrees. “Oh, the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are his judgments and how inscrutable his ways!” (Rom. 11:33). Call me what you want—”Tulip,” “Daisy,” or “Dandelion”—but do call me “Christian,” one profoundly humbled before the majesty and grace of our matchless God and compelled to preach freely the glorious gospel to all.

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2. I recognize the thorny exegetical and interpretive issues in this passage. I will not attempt an exegesis because that has been done a hundred times over by better exegetes who have failed to reach a consensus on the meaning. Consider verse 18: “Therefore, as one trespass led to condemnation for all men, so one act of righteousness leads to justification and life for all men.” Seeking to find universalism in this passage would require denial of other texts which clearly teach that not all will be saved. However, neither should we deny that in some way the merits of Christ’s death are actually extended to all, perhaps at least to the penalty of original sin which might serve as an explanation of how God saves infants and others who do not have the mental capacity to believe and whose original sin has been laid on Christ. I speculate at this point as do those who suppose that perhaps God saves only elect infants or none at all.

Dr. Stephen M. Davis is associate pastor and director of missions at Calvary Baptist Church. He holds a B.A from Bob Jones University, an M.A. in Theological Studies from Reformed Theological Seminary (Orlando, FL), an M.Div. from Calvary Baptist Theological Seminary (Lansdale, PA), and a D.Min. in Missiology from Trinity Evangelical Divinity School (Deerfield, IL). Steve has been a church planter in Philadelphia, France, and Romania.