I read J. I. Packer’s Introduction to John Owen’s Death of Death in the Death of Christ as I was being challenged out of my Arminian position into the Reformed faith. This was in a Presbyterian Church back in 1975. I remember reacting vehemently, “no, this cannot be how it is!” as I was being confronted with Romans 9 and Ephesians 1. But there it was in black and white: I finally saw that God had His definite elect and man is not in charge of his salvation.
After the initial resistance and shock I remember experiencing a new awe as my God became limitless in His power. I no longer viewed man’s will as something that could trump God’s will and desire. I knew in my heart that this aspect of God was indeed true if He really was the Sovereign God of the Universe. However I felt the keen loss of the trade-off. In order to believe that God was in control of my salvation from first to last I had to let go of an equally cherished aspect of God: that He loved everyone without favoritism and that His love had no limits. I was no longer allowed to interpret literally the passages that said that “God loved the world” or was “The Savior of the World” or that “He was not willing that any should perish but that all should come to repentance.”
I found that to embrace Calvinism meant you must forfeit this understanding of God. He is no longer the God who loves all without exception. Instead He is depicted as the God who has chosen a predetermined number from every nation for Himself. He becomes rather the God who loves “all without distinction” (He loves all kinds of people). We are told that this is what brings Him the most glory.
I will admit I had trouble being consistent and for nearly 40 years I tried to straddle these two opposing views of God. As I grasped the beautiful doctrines of Sovereign Grace I tried to stay tethered to the Arminian doctrine that Christ did indeed love and die for the whole world. I knew these two views were mutually exclusive but nevertheless I could be heard echoing both story-lines. At the same time it was the outworking of my Reformed community as well. From the pulpit you would hear both sentiments until we all became fairly adept at rendering the contradiction, while not realizing we were.
In this article Rev. Packer rightly asserts that salvation is completely the work of our Sovereign God, and that all for whom Christ died will be saved. Arminianism on the other hand makes salvation ultimately the responsibility of man’s free-will. This makes the God of the universe in the final analysis powerless to save anyone. But Arminians insist that Jesus did indeed die on behalf of every person who ever lived. This view is rightly chided by Packer as he notes they may as well go ahead and be full-blown universalists if they believe in a universal atonement.
But if one spends any time listening to the proponents of the Arminian paradigm you soon realize that they cry “universalism” of their Calvinist brothers just as quickly. They note that if Christ’s death was effectual for all for whom He died, then it implies all must be saved.
I present this intro to John Owen’s work by Packer to illuminate the fallacy of Arminianism. But in reading it observe its references to the logical outcome of Arminianism being that of universalism recognizing how by the same token the logical outcome of Calvinism can be seen as universalism as well. The Evangelical Arminian Society charges the Calvinists with “universalism” as vehemently as their opponent James White does of them: “The choices are not between Calvinism and Arminianism; it’s between Calvinism and universalism. Arminianism is a self-contradictory mess that can never defend itself.”
J. I. Packer’s work long ago once paved the way for my view of God to expand, as it needed to, into one in which He became the Holy omnipotent God of the universe, sovereign over man’s salvation, preserving true grace. But another gleaning of this work and I have come to see that this view that sharply opposes Arminianism is not an alternative but none other than the missing piece, the other half, of the overall Story of God!
As Packer so clearly reveals, these two views are so “sharply conflicting” that one wonders how they can refer to the same deity! If you follow Packer logically you must conclude these are two different religions. This is the conundrum that has been leading more and more evangelicals to consider that rather than denounce their brothers as heretics or declare a theological stalemate, there must be a “gospel third way.”
We are proposing that the God who desires that all men be saved must be the same God who is able to make it a reality by His unfailing love and sovereign power.
Here are a few quotes from J.I Packer’s Introduction to John Owen’s Death of Death in the Death of Christ
“Now, here are two coherent interpretations of the biblical gospel, which stand in evident opposition to each other. The difference between them is not primarily one of emphasis, but of content. One proclaims a God who saves; the other speaks of a God who enables man to save himself. One view presents the three great acts of the Holy Trinity for the recovering of lost mankind – election by the Father, redemption by the Son, calling by the Spirit – as directed towards the same persons, and as securing their salvation infallibly. The other view gives each act a different reference (the objects of redemption being all mankind, of calling, all who hear the gospel, and of election, those hearers who respond), and denies that man’s salvation is secured by any of them…
“The two theologies thus conceive the plan of salvation in quite different terms. One makes salvation depend on the work of God, the other on a work of man; one regards faith as part of God’s gift of salvation, the other as man’s own contribution to salvation; one gives all the glory of saving believers to God, the other divides the praise between God, who, so to speak, built the machinery of salvation, and man, who by believing operated it…
“Clearly, these two notions of internal grace are sharply opposed to each other.”
“Christ died to save a certain company of helpless sinners upon whom God had set his free saving love. Christ’s death ensured the calling and keeping – the present and final salvation – of all whose sins he bore. That is what Calvary meant, and means. The cross saved; the cross saves.”
“The old gospel, certainly, has no room for the cheap sentimentalizing which turns God’s free mercy to sinners into a constitutional softheartedness on his part which we can take for granted; nor will it countenance the degrading presentation of Christ as the baffled Savior, balked in what he hoped to do by human unbelief; nor will it indulge in maudlin appeals to the unconverted to let Christ save them out of pity for his disappointment. The pitiable Savior and the pathetic God of modern pulpits are unknown to the old gospel. The old gospel tells men that they need God, but not that God needs them (a modern falsehood); it does not exhort them to pity Christ, but announces that Christ has pitied them, though pity was the last thing they deserved. It never loses sight of the divine majesty and sovereign power of the Christ whom it proclaims, but rejects flatly all representations of him which would obscure his free omnipotence.”
You can read the entire Intro by J. I. Packer here:
http://www.all-of-grace.org/pub/others/deathofdeath.html
For more on the other side of this coin see our post on “Unlimited Atonement”:
Does Unlimited Atonement Make You a Universalist?
“The choices are not between Calvinism and Arminianism; it’s between Calvinism and universalism. Arminianism is a self-contradictory mess that can never defend itself.” – James White
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