ELECTION

GOD’S ULTIMATE TRUTH

Pieter Weeber, Th.D.

Expanded version

The doctrine of Election is for people very difficult to understand, but even more so to accept. Human nature detests being entirely dependent on a Creator who has given us His laws to obey. Especially in our present-day society, in which the focus lies on the power and autonomy of the individual to make his own choices a doctrine like Election is at a discount. No doctrine is so hated by proud human nature as this one, which makes nothing of the creature and everything of the Creator. In this book the writer analyses the views of Methodists and a number of outstanding Puritans.

He shows that this Bible truth is a great boon to humanity. It restores God’s rightful place and gives Him the praise we owe Him. The author is first and foremost a pastor for those who doubt and gives them comfort and security through the works and advice of godly men living in a bygone age. Besides he emphasizes the need for pastors to preach this truth. In conclusion he shows the distortions of Arminius and John Wesley.

After obtaining a Master’s degree in theology Dr. Pieter Weeber continued his studies by specializing in Reformation theology. He was awarded an honour’s degree at the Newburgh Theological Seminary in Indiana on the subject of Election. He has written a number of books and preaches in churches of diverse denominations in The Netherlands.

CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION

CHAPTER 2 METHODISTS’ VIEWS ON ELECTION

CHAPTER 3 GOD’S FIRST DECREE: ELECTION

CHAPTER 4 THOMAS BOSTON

CHAPTER 5 AUGUSTUS TOPLADY

CHAPTER 6 RICHARD SIBBES

CHAPTER 7 STEPHEN CHARNOCK

CHAPTER 8 THOMAS ADAMS

CHAPTER 9 JONATHAN EDWARDS

CHAPTER 10 JOHN BUNYAN

CHAPTER 11 GEORGE WHITEFIELD

CHAPTER 12 CHARLES SPURGEON

CHAPTER 13 OPPOSITION DOCTRINE OF ELECTION

CHAPTER 14 WHY ELECTION SHOULD BE PREACHED

CHAPTER 15 CONCLUSIONS DRAWN FROM THE PURITANS ANALYZED

CHAPTER 16 MISUNDERSTANDINGS DOCTRINE OF ELECTION (*65)

CHAPTER 17 THE FALSE TEACHING OF ARMINIUS

CHAPTER 18 WESLEY’S ERRATIC VIEWS

CHAPTER 19 NOTES

CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION

The doctrine of Election is for human beings difficult to understand, but even more to accept. This is not to be wondered at. People naturally detest being entirely dependent on a Creator who has given His laws to obey. Especially in our present-day society, in which the focus lies on the power and autonomy of the individual to make his own choices a doctrine like Election is at a discount. No doctrine is so detested by proud human nature as this one, which makes nothing of the creature and everything of the Creator. At no other point is the enmity of the carnal mind so blatantly and hotly evident.

The big rift in theology, although a latent undercurrent for many years, came to a head in the early 17th century, when two opposing systems of theology caused a breach which has existed until this day. Arminians, who derived their name from the Dutch theologian James Arminius, attempted to reform Reformed Theology. According to Calvinists the preaching of the SOVEREIGNTY OF GOD as exercised by God in foreordaining the eternal destiny of each of His creatures, serves as a scourge to divide the chaff from the wheat.

Methodists on the other hand believed in the FREE WILL OF MAN. A special Synod was convened at Dordt in Holland (1618-1619) to settle this issue. The purpose of the Synod was to solve the controversy that had arisen in the Dutch churches through the spread of Arminianism. The views of the Arminians, who were also called Remonstrants, were condemned as heresy. The triumphing Calvinists at the Synod, led by professor Franciscus Gomarus of the University of Leiden, became known as the Counter-Remonstrants.

In the early 17th century this controversy also raged in these two major movements which were trying to revive English Theology of the Church of England, but failed and finally split away. In this study I would like to pit the arguments of the Methodists in particular John Wesley as the chief founding father on the one hand against some major Puritan writers on the other. These two groups have been selected, because they are exponents of views in the Reformation period that have, often bitterly, divided the church for centuries until now. At the end some conclusions will be drawn. I hope to give some pastoral comfort both to preachers who shrink from dealing with this subject. and to those who are daily bowed down under and tormented by the thought that they are possibly not elected.

Why this controversial doctrine? The succinct answer is: It is a neglected doctrine. Though occupying so prominent a place in the Word of God, it is today but little preached and even less understood. Of course, you can hardly expect that the “higher critics” and their blinded dupes should preach a message that makes nothing of man.

But even among those who wish to be looked up to as orthodox and evangelical, there are scarcely any who give this grand truth a real place in either the pulpit or in their writings. In some cases this is due to ignorance, because this subject was not taught in seminaries or universities and certainly not in Bible Institutes. Therefore multitudes have never noticed its great importance and value. In too many cases it is a desire to be popular with their hearers, which muzzles their mouths. Nevertheless, neither ignorance, nor prejudice, nor enmity can do away with the doctrine itself or lessen its vital momentousness.

CHAPTER 2 METHODISTS’ VIEWS ON ELECTION

In Wesley’s sermon on Free Grace he remarks that it is a plain proof that the doctrine of predestination is not a doctrine of God, because it makes void the ordinance of God. God is not divided against himself. Besides it directly tends to destroy that holiness which is the end of all the ordinances of God. I do not say, none who hold it are holy (for God is of tender mercy to those who are unavoidably entangled in errors of any kind) but that the doctrine itself has a manifest tendency to destroy holiness in general, for it wholly takes away the hope of future reward, the fear of punishment, the hope of heaven and the fear of hell. There is no motive to struggle for eternal life, when someone’s lot is cast already. What is the need of leading a holy life, when you are already condemned to hell?.

What is important to Wesley is that the hope and happiness of the Christian is not a notion, a speculative belief or a bare opinion, but a feeling of possession of God in your heart, wrought in you by the Holy Ghost or the witness of God’s Spirit with your spirit that you are a child of God. This is also epitomised as “the full assurance of faith is the true ground of a Christian’s happiness”.

Wesley’s main objection to election was that such a view would no doubt destroy our zeal for good works. It cuts off one of the strongest motives to all acts of human mercy, such as feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, visiting the sick etc. What is the use of relieving our neighbour’s temporal wants, when he will inevitably drop into eternal fire?.

Someone who often preached with John Wesley and who became known as a fervent and staunch supporter of Wesley’s ideas, John Fletcher, refused the wealthy life of his parents in Durham and chose to live and work with unique devotion and zeal in relative poverty. Fletcher was one of the few parish clergymen who understood Wesley and his work well. He denied that Wesley slavishly followed Arminius.

Fletcher remarks in his letter to Dr. Adams that Mr. Wesley does not deny the corrupt nature of man. Man has still a freedom of will to turn to God, but not without the assistance of grace. Mr. Wesley is no Arminian. Wesley believed in the total fall of man. He constantly maintains that by nature man’s will is only free to do evil. Divine grace, however, must first prevent it and make man willing and able to turn to God.

Wesley never stops affirming that our salvation is of God in Christ and is therefore solely dependent on grace. All opportunities, invitations, inclinations, and power to believe are bestowed on us by mere grace. This grace is absolutely free. He asserts with equal confidence that according to the Gospel our damnation is entirely due to ourselves by our obstinate unbelief and unfaithfulness. In order to understand the Methodists’ view better it is mandatory to briefly sketch the Reformation position.

Reformed Protestant theologians of both schools of thought (Supralapsarians and Infralapsarians) gradually developed a system of Calvinist doctrine which became known by its five-pointed acronym TULIP:

TOTAL DEPRAVITY
Men are dead in trespasses and sins before God sovereignly regenerates them and gives them eternal salvation. This implies a denial of free will.

UNCONDITIONAL ELECTION
God chooses some men to save them apart from anything they do on their own. This leaves open the question of whether God actively predestinates some to damnation or merely leaves them to their deserved damnation

LIMITED ATONEMENT
Christ died only to save the elect and His atoning death is not universal for all humanity.

IRRESISTIBLE GRACE
God’s grace cannot be resisted. The elect will receive it and be saved by it. The damned will never receive it.

PERSEVERANCE
The elect will inevitably persevere till their final salvation or eternal security.

Predestination as sketched above is totally unacceptable to John Wesley and the Arminian Methodists because of their concept of grace. Wesley introduced the concept of PREVENIENT GRACE. He means by this the general grace that every man has received and enables him to cooperate with saving grace. By responding to grace the person may freely and increasingly become an active, willing participant in receiving the conditions for justification. Freedom is not static but grows by stages. Prevenient grace may be regarded as the lowest gear in the train of grace that enables one to move from inertia to activity, so that one may gradually pick up evangelical speed.

Since the fall from freedom no one who is spiritually dead is able to choose the good. Nonetheless, persons still have a degree of liberty that allows them to be self-governing. Otherwise we would be only machines, stocks and stones. This autonomy, however, does not enable persons to turn to God by means of their own resources. It may be apparent that Wesley diverges here from Arminian concepts. No fallen creature has power to do good work pleasing to God without the grace of God preventing us.

Now here there is a difficulty. Our present-day use of the word “prevent” means “obstruct, hinder or stop”. In 18th century usage, however, it meant “prepare, make ready or go before”. One of the texts Wesley was fond of citing was Philippians 2:12-13 Therefore, my dear friends, as you have always obeyed— not only in my presence, but now much more in my absence — continue to work out your salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God who works in you to will and to act according to His good purpose.

Prevenient grace plays a crucial part in Wesleyan evangelical teaching. The treatises, in which this important teaching is concentrated are the homilies “On working out our own salvation” and “On conscience”. In both homilies the Philippian texts cited above occupy a central position. Wesley emphasizes that “working out your own salvation” does not imply the Pelagian view on the Free Will of Man without God’s prevenient grace. The co-working design of grace asks for our responsive will, through which it is God who is working concurrently in us to will and to do God’s own good pleasure.

This response of man to God’s offer of salvation is personal. After all it is your own personal salvation. It does not occur by a simple, unilateral and absolute decree of God as the Calvinists hold. As God is working in you, you are called to share in the working out of your own salvation. This is a matter of our own will, which God does not enforce, but seeks to draw forth by illuminating, wooing the will and inward conviction.

Faith is the work of God and yet it is the duty of man to believe. Besides it is our duty to work with singleness of heart, utmost earnestness of spirit and with all care and caution, with utmost diligence, speed, punctuality and exactness.

Wesley distinguishes four different types of grace:

a) PREVENIENT GRACE
The saving work of God does not begin by our being attentive to prevenient grace, but by grace that awakens our attentiveness. Prevenient grace elicits the first wish to please God. It is the first dawn of light concerning His will and at the same time the first slight transient conviction of having sinned against Him. Grace is working quietly to the point of bringing us in time to despair over our own righteousness.

b) CONVICTING GRACE
Prevenient grace leads toward convicting grace. It brings one to the point of attentiveness to one’s own sinfulness. Convicting grace enables one to grow towards repentance, towards greater knowledge of oneself as a sinner and makes us aware of how far away from God one is. It brings one to despair over one’s own righteousness under the law.

c) JUSTIFYING GRACE
Wesley has drawn a clear distinction between justification and sanctification: By justification we are saved from the guilt of sin and restored to the favour of God. By sanctification we are saved from the power and root of sin and restored to the image of God. God works through justifying grace to make us aware that His favour is addressed personally to us.

d) SANCTIFYING GRACE.
By sanctifying grace our salvation is being brought to full moral and behavioural fruitfulness. In sanctification we are saved from the root of sin and restored to the renewed image of God. Sanctifying grace is not merely an awareness of God’s pardon. It is rather digging into the roots of sin so as to enable the believer to live out the glorious liberty of the children of God.

After this necessary discussion about Free Will and Grace we turn to Wesley’s views on Predestination. Although Wesley remained loyal to the Anglican Church contrary to his adherents after him he scrapped Article 17 of the Thirty-Nine articles of the Anglican Church: “Predestination to life is the everlasting purpose of God, whereby (before the foundations of the world were laid) he decreed by his counsel secret to us, to deliver from curse and damnation those whom he has chosen in Christ out of mankind and to bring them by Christ to everlasting salvation as vessels made to honour. Those who were endued with so excellent a benefit of God, are called according to God’s purpose by his Spirit working in due season. Through God’s grace they obey His call, they are justified freely, they are made sons of God by adoption, they will be made like the image of his only-begotten Son Jesus Christ and they walk in all good works. Finally by God’s mercy they attain to everlasting felicity.

As the godly consideration of Predestination, and our Election in Christ, is full of sweet, pleasant, and unspeakable comfort to godly persons, and such as feel in themselves the working of the Spirit of Christ, mortifying the works of the flesh, and their earthly members, and drawing up their mind to high and heavenly things, as well because it doth greatly establish and confirm their faith of eternal Salvation to be enjoyed through Christ as because it doth fervently kindle their love towards God.

So, for curious and carnal persons, lacking the Spirit of Christ, to have continually before their eyes the sentence of God’s Predestination, is a most dangerous downfall, whereby the Devil thrusts them either into desperation or into wretchedness of most unclean living.

Furthermore, we must abide by God’s promises as they are set forth in Holy Scripture. Instead of a wooden view of predestination Wesley stressed God’s foreknowledge of free choice of sin by persons.

God not only foresees the fall and provides a remedy. God also decrees, foresees and permits the creation, fall and incarnation in order to effect His overriding purpose that man should be made holier and happier than Adam before the fall. Wesley regarded double predestination, which is according to him the unavoidable result of Calvin’s teaching as the very anti-dote of Methodism, the most deadly and successful enemy. It is an absolute lie, which strikes at the root of Methodism, grieves the holiest of persons and endangers the soul.

It is not superfluous to pay more attention to the dilemma of double predestination in this respect. The key premise of double predestination is that God ordained some to eternal salvation and others to eternal damnation. By virtue of the eternal, unchangeable, irresistible decree of God one part of mankind is infallibly saved and the rest infallibly damned, whereby it is impossible that any of the latter should be saved. Whatever one calls it – election, preterition, predestination or reprobation – it all tends towards the same point: God before time began decided who would be damned.

Wesley gives seven arguments against Double Predestination. All arguments are found in Sermon 128 on Free Grace, Volume 7, p.373-386:

1) PREDESTINATION MAKES PREACHING UNNECESSARY AND ABSURD
Why should one preach if it is already decided before the time by a divine decree?

2) PREDESTINATION TENDS TO UNDERMINE HOLINESS
It takes away the primary motive to live in holiness as commended and commanded in Scripture.

3) PREDESTINATION TENDS TO OBSTRUCT THE CONSOLING WORK OF THE SPIRIT

4) PREDESTINATION TENDS TO DESTROY ZEAL FOR WORKS OF MERCY
There is little incentive for clothing the naked, visiting prisoners and caring for the sick. Why bother to do good works if one is already securely elected?

5) PREDESTINATION MAKES HISTORICAL REVELATION ABSURD AND SUPERFLUOUS

6) IT IS BAD EXEGESIS.
Those who take double predestination as the key to all other biblical testimony find it increasingly hard to state an apology for other crucial biblical teachings such as obedience, faith, hope and love.

7) PREDESTINATION IS PRONE TO BLASPHEMY
It makes God a liar and Jesus a hypocrite dangling salvation before all, yet allowing only a tiny group of the elect to receive it. By predestination teaching the moral attributes of God are subverted.

The Sovereignty of God destroys other moral attributes of God, mercy, compassion, truth, justice and love. I myself shudder to write down the following comment Wesley committed to paper. “Such a merciful God appears to him as a capricious tyrant more deceptive and cruel than the devil himself and the human person a machine.”

A very important remark he makes is that Scripture teaches that God’s sovereignty is directed by His love. He views love as God’s foremost attribute. This is a view that is of frequent occurrence nowadays. God’s attribute of love supplants or diminishes His other attributes like His justice. Of course there are some texts in Scripture that Wesley could not avoid. One of them is Romans 8:29-30 For those God foreknew He also predestined to be conformed to the likeness of His Son, that He might be the firstborn among many brothers. And those He predestined, He also called; those He called, He also justified; those He justified, He also glorified.

Wesley did not deny every conceivable view of predestination, but only later hyper-Augustinian views, which he thought unscriptural, unreasonable and lacking ecumenical consent. For instance Calvin’s successor Theodore Beza’s supralapsarian explanation of this passage is according to Wesley the logical outcome of an opinionated fixation on Divine sovereignty. [Note: Supralapsarianism is the belief that God decreed the election or non-election of individuals to salvation before the Fall].

You might wonder whether Wesley saw God’s foreknowledge as a kind of pre-determination. His opinion was that God’s knowledge differs from human knowledge. God is simultaneously aware of all events in time, since only God is eternal and omniscient. God already foreknows all who will respond negatively or positively to free grace. To God all time is eternally present. From creation to death God knows what is in the mind of everyone. Someone does not sin, because God knows it in advance, but God knows, because the person chooses to sin. God’s foreknowledge recognizes our sin, but does not cause it.

With regard to Election proper it is necessary to distinguish two biblical senses of election.

1) Election in Scripture may refer to a personal Divine appointment to accomplish a particular task. Examples are God’s election of Cyrus and Paul. This does not imply eternal happiness. Judas, for instance, was called to be a disciple, but was not saved, holy or blessed.

2) In other passages election refers to eternal happiness. Such election is not unconditional for it depends on its faithful reception. Wesley strongly defended Free Will. It was his firm belief that human beings are created to reflect the freedom of God. Only through freedom can the goodness of God consciously and rationally be reflected on. Take away freedom and you take away the greatest expression of God’s glory in creation. Scripture repeatedly calls each of us to choose between death and life, good and evil. The texts that Wesley preferred quoting are:

To Adam he said: Because you listened to your wife and ate fruit from the tree about which I commanded you “You must not eat from it”. Cursed is the ground because of you; through painful toil you will eat food from it all the days of your life (Genesis 3:17).

Know therefore that the LORD your God is God; He is the faithful God, keeping His covenant of love to a thousand generations of those who love Him and keep His commandments. But those who hate Him He will repay to their face by destruction;

He will not be slow to repay to their face those who hate Him. Therefore, take care to follow the commands, decrees and laws I give you today. If you pay attention to these laws and are careful to follow them, then the LORD your God will keep His covenant of love with you, as He swore to your ancestors (Deuteronomy 7:9-12).

But everyone who hears these words of Mine and does not put them into practice is like a foolish man who built his house on sand (Matthew 7:26).