The following is a section from the book Why I Am Not A Calvinist by Jerry L. Walls and Joseph R. Dongell (Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 2004), pp. 79-84. It is taken from chapter 2, “Engaging the Bible.”
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.”
“Calvinists often speak of these verses as “the golden chain,” an unbreakable sequence of steps in God’s sovereign plan leading from unconditional, individual election to final glorification. The elect can find great comfort in the assurance that all those who begin the process (by God’s election) will make it through to glorification. All those who know for certain that they have been justified possess an ironclad guarantee of their final salvation and glorification.
Our first hesitation in accepting this interpretation stems from the warning Paul issued to his Roman readers only sixteen verses earlier: “If you live according to the sinful nature, you will die; but if by the Spirit you put to death the misdeeds of the body, you will live” (Rom 8:13). Paul makes it clear that glorification depends on a Christian’s continued connection to Jesus: “If we are children, then we are heirs – heirs of God and co-heirs with Christ, if indeed we share in his sufferings” (Rom 8:17, emphasis added). Later we find Paul again warning his Gentile Christian readers that those who veer away from God’s grace face fearful prospects: “If God did not spare the natural branches, he will not spare you either. Consider therefore the kindness and sternness of God: sternness to those who fell, but kindness to you, provided that you continue in his kindness. Otherwise, you also will be cut off” (Rom 11:21-22). Why would such a warning ever be uttered if the “golden chain” of Romans 8:29-30 functions as an absolute guarantee for individuals?
Likewise, in Galatians, Paul identified the two lifestyles and the consequences: “Do not be deceived: God cannot be mocked. A man reaps what he sows. The one who sows to please his sinful nature, from that nature will reap destruction; the one who sows to please the Spirit, from the Spirit will reap eternal life” (Gal 6:7-8). This warning itself reemphasizes what Paul had declared to the Galatian believers earlier: “I warn you, as I did before that those who live like this will not inherit the kingdom of God” (Gal 5:21).
It has often been suggested that these warnings expose no eternal danger to real Christians. We are told either that Paul was not addressing genuine Christians at all or that he was envisioning purely temporal dangers, such as illness or premature (physical) death.[1] But neither of these explanations can account for the specific content of these passages. At other times we are asked to imagine that Paul was engaging in rhetorical overstatement to spur his readers on to good behavior. This suggestion is both psychologically and morally troublesome, reminding us of parents who use empty threats to manipulate their unruly children (e.g., “Put that toy down now and come with me, or Mommy’s going to leave the store without you”). If Paul believes that the elect are absolutely guaranteed ultimate salvation and that this guarantee forms the very bedrock of Christian confidence in the face of suffering and trial, then it is puzzling to find him undercutting this very guarantee with warnings to the contrary. But if these stern warnings teach that the journey from election to glory is not inevitable, then we doubt that Paul was attempting to establish just the opposite in Romans 8:29-30.
If there is good reason to question the Calvinist interpretation of Romans 8:29-30, what other viable understandings might the text suggest? One direction relates to the verb tenses found in the fivefold sequence of God’s actions: he foreknew, he predestined, he called, he justified, he glorified. Many point out that Paul expresses the last step in the past tense (glorified) even though for Paul and all Christians to date, glorification lies in the future. Less often realized is that the third and fourth steps (called and justified) are likewise presented as past events, though God has been and continues to be about the business of calling and justifying people down through the ages. This may show us that Paul is viewing the entire series not from a vantage point within human history but from the end of human history, after God has brought to completion the whole redemptive plan. Seen from the end of history, Paul observes that all Christians who have been glorified have of course been foreknown, predestined, called and justified. As James Dunn suggests:
Paul is not inviting reflection on the classic problems of determinism and free will, or thinking in terms of a decree which excludes as well as one which includes….His thought is simply that from the perspective of the end, it will be evident that history has been the stage for the unfolding of God’s purpose, the purpose of the Creator fulfilling his original intentions in creating.[2]
A second (non-Calvinist) understanding of Romans 8:29-30 takes its cue from Paul’s teaching in Romans 5 and 6 that sinners who once lived in Adam’s lineage may (through faith) be incorporated “into Christ” through baptism (Rom 5:12-17; 6:3-4). Those now residing “in Christ” live in a new reality and benefit from the mighty events of death and resurrection that Jesus himself experienced. The apostle can therefore address believers themselves (all of whom are “in Christ”) as those who have been buried with Jesus, or as those who have died with him, or as those who walk in newness of life, or as those who will experience resurrection “with him” (Rom 6:4, 8). Since Jesus is the primary character in the events of God’s redemptive drama, we experience these events only indirectly, by being “in” the lead player. It is difficult to overstate just how significant for the whole Pauline theology is this corporate vision of the church finding its identity, its salvation, its wealth and its security “in him.”
Here we are back to the same ground already covered regarding Ephesians 1:4-5, where believers are described as having been chosen and predestined “in him.” This only encourages us all the more to read Romans 8:29-30 as referring not to a specific, set number of persons who individually progress through the five “steps” without mathematical gain or loss, but to the whole body of Christ, without particular focus on the individuality of the members. The people of God as a whole, having been incorporated into Christ, are most certainly destined to arrive at the goal God has established from the beginning. Each of us is assured of participating in that most certain end, provided we remain among this people and remain in his kindness (Rom 11:22).
We can hardly improve on the way Herman Ridderbos, a Dutch Reformed scholar, has addressed the whole matter:
[The certainty of salvation] does not rest on the fact that the church belongs to a certain “number,” but that it belongs to Christ, from before the foundation of the world. Fixity does not lie in a hidden decretum, therefore, but in the corporate unity of the Church with Christ, whom it has come to know in the gospel and has learned to embrace in faith.[3]
A third (non-Calvinist) understanding of Romans 8:29-30 asserts that the fivefold “chain,” while certainly stressing divine action, must not be read as teaching that human actions play no role within the “chain.” As all would agree, justification (element four in the chain) is explicitly conditioned throughout Romans upon faith (e.g., Rom 5:1), and glorification (element five in the chain) is explicitly conditioned upon faithful suffering (Rom 8:17; compare with Phil 3:10-11). John Murray is even willing to permit, for the sake of argument, that God’s loving choice of the elect (element one in the chain) is conditioned upon God seeing ahead of time who would believe. But before anyone imagines that Murray has inexplicably fallen into the Arminian camp, Murray hastens to explain that (in his view) acts of faith themselves cannot be defined as human activity, since God himself creates faith.[4] In other words, Murray allows that faith operates inside and between various elements of the chain but denies that faith is a genuinely free human act. In this way, Murray ends up defending a thoroughgoing monergism in which “God alone is active in those events which are mentioned and no activity of men supplies any ingredient of their definition or contributes to their efficacy.”[5]
Our point here shall be modest. Murray’s treatment undercuts the claim many Calvinists have made regarding Romans 8:29-30: that it stands as an immovable rock of Gibraltar smashing all attempts to disprove Calvinism. In our judgment, Murray and others must already have in hand specific convictions about the nature of faith, along with particular beliefs about the necessity of “divine monergism,” to guarantee an interpretation of Romans 8:29-30 that supports Calvinist views of predestination, etc. Arminian readings that understand (along with Dunn, for example) the chain as viewed by Paul from the end of time, or that understand (along with Ridderbos, for example) the entire chain as contained with the election and glorification of Christ, or that understand (in more traditional Arminian fashion) the chain as assuming – though not stressing – the conditions of human faith throughout, deal no less cogently or reasonably with the text at hand. In this case, as in others, what we (all) bring to the text tends to be more than we might imagine.
As a final matter, we note that Calvinists often decry Arminian interpretations of Romans 8:29-30 as failing to provide a sufficiently strong sense of comfort and security to the believer. But it is ironic to hear Calvinists reject these interpretations on these emotional grounds, since it is Calvinists who often charge others with interpreting Scripture so as to gratify human emotions and sensitivities. In the case of Romans 8:29-30, why can’t we claim that the Arminian interpretations challenge the human demand for absolute certainty and comfortable security, while the Calvinist interpretation caves in to that demand? In any event, Arminian readings do provide a large measure of comfort and assurance by affirming that God’s overall plan will certainly come to fulfillment for all who continue trusting in God. It is our judgment that this kind of assurance is what this passage affirms, however fervently one might prefer the “ironclad guarantee” proposed by Calvinist interpreters.”
Return to Chapter 16 – The Doctrine of Election According to Scripture
Footnotes
[1] This does appear to be the case in 1 Corinthians 5:5; 11:30 and James 5:15-16. It would seem that sin can and sometimes does have an effect on health and lifespan.
[2] James D. G. Dunn, Romans 1-8 (Dallas: Word, 1988), p. 486.
[3] Herman Ridderbos, Paul: An Outline of His Theology, trans. John Richard de Witt (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1975), pp. 350-51.
[4] John Murray, The Epistle to the Romans: The English Text with Introduction, Exposition and Notes, one-volume ed. (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1968), pp. 316 and 321 n. 62.
[5] Ibid., 321.
The Truth of the Gospel 