It must be clearly understood that biblically speaking, faith is the opposite of meritorious works, it is not a “contribution” to one’s own salvation. Rather, faith is the God ordained means by which sinners gain access to God’s grace which is found in his justifying and saving work “in Christ.” It is the casting of ourselves totally upon the grace of God found “in Christ” which is our hope of salvation. The object of faith and the nature of faith are the biblical emphases, not faith as human “works” or “merit.” Faith in the scriptures is presented as the sinner’s response of submission, trust and surrender to God and Christ. It is the means of accepting the salvation provided for us in Christ. Faith is a decision of the will to agree with and submit to God’s revelation of truth, especially his Word of salvation wrought in Christ Jesus.
If God, in eternity past, predestined everyone’s eternal destiny, including whether they would be caused to believe and exhibit “faith,” then faith, however it is defined, is an impossibility for the non-elect. And faith, as I have been describing it biblically, is also an impossibility, for a person cannot cast themselves in love and trust, submission and surrender upon God if they cannot know that God is kindly disposed towards them such that they can be saved, The God in whom we are to have faith must be known with respect to his salvific will for each of us. Calvinism does not allow for this knowledge and assurance. In Calvinism, the nature and salvific disposition of God and Christ Jesus – the divine objects of faith – are obscured by its deterministic predestinarianism. In other words, a person cannot have a confident knowledge of the divine will with regard to their salvation. Unconditional election, being a decision God has made in eternity past as to whom to save and whom to damn, provides no object for the exercise of faith or trust. You cannot put your trust in a decision of God made in eternity past as to your eternal destiny which you are not privy to. Unconditional election fails to provide the assurance of God’s good intentions to each of us that are required for faith and trust. We cannot trust in a God that may have predestined us for eternal damnation. But we can trust in a God who lets us know he loves us and has provided for our salvation “in Christ.” There must be a point of initial trust, of initial faith, and faith and trust must be based on an assured knowledge of God’s will for our salvation – that he loves and cares for us. Therefore Christ, as God come in human flesh to die for us, as the demonstration of God’s love for us, is the object of faith. There is no secret salvific will or decision behind the demonstration of divine love for all in the perfect person and redemptive work of Jesus. The cross contains sufficient knowledge of God’s saving love for all (Jn. 12:32).
Now, God’s spoken word must be consistent with that “good news.” Therefore, it is Christ as the savior for all individuals that is preached in the gospel. Jesus Christ reveals the complete salvific will of God for each of us. If it is the case that God has predestined some to heaven and some to hell and we cannot know the fate determined for us, there is no basis for placing one’s trust in God for salvation. Remember, biblical trust is not “I hope God will save me!” If we cannot know God’s decision as to our eternal destiny, then in the biblical sense of a sure confidence in another to do for me that which I cannot do for myself, there would be nothing to trust God for. You would not know anything about God’s decision with respect to your salvation or condemnation. Biblical trust or hope “in Christ” turns into “I hope God loves me. I hope Jesus died for me. I hope that God has elected me.” This is hardly the biblical gospel. This is hardly the biblical meaning of hope and trust. The call to trust and believe presupposes that the one making the call is trustworthy, has only good intentions, and has no harm planned for the person being called upon to trust and believe. An essential element of trust is that the person to be trusted has only good intentions in mind towards the trusting one. Love and trust go hand in hand. Faith requires an object, and that object must be deemed trustworthy by the one who is to do the trusting. The object God provided for our faith and trust is Christ, “the anointed,” “the Elect One” (1 Pet. 2:6, cf. Isa. 42:1, Lu. 9:35, 23:35) in whose death God’s love for us is demonstrated (Rom. 5:8). If the call of the gospel is to have faith in Christ, and God cannot be false, disingenuous, or lie, we can therefore know God’s saving disposition to us by his call, invitation, command, etc. to come to Christ and be saved. We can know God has provided for our salvation, that he wants us to be saved, and we can be saved. If we have no knowledge of God’s kind disposition towards us, then we cannot trust him. The words “trust me” only have meaning if the one speaking them has good in mind for the hearer and not evil. So, if these words go out to all, then they speak what is a reality for all. God cannot lie. “In Christ,” God loves you. You can be saved.
So, this dark, mysterious, decree of God regarding “whatsoever comes to pass” that makes our eternal destiny a gloomy unknown is opposed to the biblical gospel of light and life; the “good news” in which Christ is presented as the revelation of the will of God regarding our salvation.1 God simply wants us to trust in what he has done for us all in Christ. Scripture is clear that the accomplishment of our salvation was the work of God and God alone and that it is complete in Christ. This is what is meant by “salvation is all of God.” Nothing is required for us to contribute to this saving work. Our salvation was completed by Jesus on the cross. This is the demonstration of God’s grace to us. Now the fact is that God ordained that this salvation needs to be appropriated by each individual by faith. It is a salvation by grace through faith. This faith is not a matter of human effort and merit because the content of the gospel affirms the possibility and necessity of faith and points to its nature as a personal response of humility and surrender before God and to the working of the Spirit of God who is always present whenever the gospel is proclaimed. Faith is precisely the opposite of how the Calvinist depicts it. It is renouncing all self-merit, any claim to working or earning God’s favor, and fabricating the means of one’s own salvation. It is the forfeiting of the mindset of self-righteousness, priviledge, and unbelief in God’s Word. It is renouncing the self-deception that “I’m good enough.” It is renouncing the self-effort that “I’m trying to be good enough.” Faith is everywhere in Scripture contrasted to works and a righteousness of our own that seeks to earn God’s favor. And even though it is everywhere enjoined upon the person themselves to believe as something they actually must do, it is never considered meritorious. Faith, and faith alone, is that which pleases God (Heb. 11:6). Therefore the biblical writers do not reflect the Calvinist mischaracterization of a genuine human response of faith as a work or meritorious contribution to one’s salvation. Simply because faith involves an act of the will does not make it a meritorious contribution to salvation. Theologian William MacDonald comments,
“One of the most common misunderstandings about faith is that initial faith in God is “a gift of God” or “a gift of the Spirit.” One would never conclude this from the great “faith” chapter of the New Testament that says: “And without faith it is impossible to please him. For whoever would draw near to God must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who seek him. (Heb 11:6)” 2
This misunderstanding of faith is the result of faulty Calvinist presuppositions about the nature of God and man. Indeed, it is fundamentally a misunderstanding of the freedom of God. The Calvinist does not allow God to be God as the determiner of his own will and actions. The Calvinist is fearful of giving God too much “slack” in the rope of his sovereignty. He defines the parameters inside which God must remain for him not to lose control of his universe. For the Calvinist God is not free to glorify himself by creating a world differentiated from himself, along with beings that can function with a significant degree of freedom of the will without the comprehensive imposition of his own will upon them. God must be glorified in all things, which is reduced to requiring his absolute dominion over all things via his predetermination of all things. God, regardless of how he has determined to establish the world, cannot lose control of it and therefore the Calvinist reasons that he must have predetermined all things to occur as they do. Absolute control requires universal divine causal determinism. For the Calvinist, God could not be God without structuring reality in this way. So it must be that God has also decided beforehand who will be saved. Since God must be glorified and cannot suffer failure, he therefore works faith in those he has predetermined to be saved. And since all people suffer from “total inability,” God must first regenerate the elect before they can believe. So, faith cannot be conditional based on the response of the sinner. If things were any other way, God would be at risk of failing and make himself subject to the will of the creature. He would suffer a loss of dignity, sovereignty, and glory. But this is to fail to understand what theologian Jack Cottrell observes when he writes,
“…conditonality is not a violation of sovereignty. This would be so only if God were forced into a situation where he had to react, only if it were a necessity imposed upon God from without. But this is not the case. It was God’s sovereign choice to bring into existence a universe inhabited by free-will creatures whose decision would to some extent determine the total picture.” (The Doctrine of God, v. 2, 347.)
Hence, Calvinists who are consistent with their theological paradigm, lock up human freedom and the response of faith under the “whatsoever comes to pass” of God’s eternal decree. The result of this deterministic theology is that the will of the individual is annihilated, and the gospel message perverted. There is no such thing as human agency and God becomes the sole agent in his own world. Therefore, I submit that we surely know that this Calvinist determinism is not a correct interpretation of Scripture by virtue of the theological and practical distortion and incoherence it generates. Even given the reasons Calvinists offer as to why we should look past this distortion and incoherence (e.g., that the contradictions are only “apparent,” “they’re an antinomy,” “we cannot comprehend the ways of God,” “the Bible teaches both determinism and freedom,” etc.), we cannot do so, for this would be to forfeit the very foundations of logical and moral judgment and the discernment necessary for good biblical interpretation. We would be left vulnerable to whatever anyone proposed as the meaning of the text. Hence, the Calvinist’s hermeneutic that allows for incoherence, inconsistency, and contradiction is a bad hermeneutic. This brings us to our next sections on hermeneutics and an examination of faith in the book of Romans.
1 Note that Calvinists embrace their doctrine of unconditional election by presuming themselves to be among the elect. Calvinism is a scheme of religion in which one must presume one’s own salvation. Note too that Calvinist unconditional election can only be embraced after one hears a gospel that is inclusive of themselves and not the exclusive messages of unconditional election and limited atonement. That would be no gospel.
2 William G. MacDonald, “The Spirit of Grace” in Grace Unlimited, ed. Clark H. Pinnock (Minneapolis: Bethany Fellowship, 1975), 87.
The Truth of the Gospel 