a word before we begin

There are some questions, My Friend, that become harder the more loudly Christians insist they have settled them. Election and free will may be chief among them. Put ten believers in a room and ask how the sovereign choosing of God fits together with the real response of man, and before long somebody will have a chart out, somebody else will be correcting the chart, and two dear brothers who agree on the gospel will be speaking to one another as though one of them has misplaced Christianity altogether.

I do not mean to add one more chart to the pile. I am not going to tell you that I have found the secret hinge which Calvin missed and Arminius missed and two thousand years of the church somehow failed to notice. I have not. What I have found, and what I think is far more useful, is that the Word of God is perfectly content to tell us two things at once. God is sovereign in salvation. He chooses, draws, calls, saves, keeps, and receives all the glory. And man is spoken to as a real man: commanded to repent, invited to come, warned not to harden his heart, blamed when he refuses, and promised life when he believes. Scripture never apologizes for either truth. It simply gives us both.1

That is where I mean to stay. Not because the middle is always safe, for sometimes the middle of a road is simply where you get run over. There are doctrines on which the Word speaks with such plainness that the Christian has no business hovering politely between yes and no. But there are also places where God has told us enough to believe and not enough to explain, and humility means knowing the difference. The secret things belong unto the LORD our God. The things revealed belong unto us. We get into trouble when we insist upon climbing the fence between the two.

So I want to take this old argument down off the shelf and look at it slowly. We will look at Calvinism and Arminianism, at the five points, at the texts about the world and the all and the whosoever, at election and evangelism and assurance, and at the very human pride that can creep into every camp, including the camp that congratulates itself for having no camp at all. I will give the other side enough room to speak for itself, because a weak caricature proves nothing. But I will also tell you plainly where I think it goes wrong. Warmth is not the same thing as fog.

And then, when we are finished with the old names and the Greek words and the systems, I want to bring the whole thing back down to the place where doctrine is meant to live: a lost soul, an open Bible, a believer with a mouth, and a Lord who said go. We will put the cookies on the bottom shelf, as Dr. Harry Ironside used to say, and see whether the mystery looks quite so frightening when we stop trying to be God over it.2

chapter one

a mystery we were never meant to master

Let me begin with a distinction that has brought me a great deal of peace. There is a difference between a truth God has hidden and a truth God has made plain but we simply do not like. We must never call disobedience mystery. If the Lord has spoken clearly, our business is to bow. But when He has spoken clearly on two sides of a matter and has not shown us the join between them, our business is not to manufacture the missing piece and then preach our invention as though it came down from Sinai.

We already know how to live with this in the very center of the faith. We believe one God in three Persons, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, and every honest Christian knows that he can state that truth far better than he can comprehend it. We believe the Lord Jesus Christ is fully God and fully man, one Person in two natures, and the old church councils did not explain that mystery until no questions remained. They did something wiser. They guarded what Scripture had said and refused the ditches on either side.3

There is something wonderfully freeing in that. You are allowed to reach the end of what God has revealed and stop. You are allowed to say, I believe both things because the Book says both things, and I do not know how the Lord holds them together in His infinite mind. That is not intellectual laziness. Sometimes it is the first honest thing a theologian has said all afternoon.

We have very small heads, My Friend, and a very great God.

Look at the matter before us. Paul says that God chose us in Christ before the foundation of the world. The Lord says that no man can come to Him except the Father draw him. And the same Bible turns around and says, whosoever will, let him come; be ye reconciled to God; today, if ye will hear His voice, harden not your hearts. Election is there. Drawing is there. Command is there. Invitation is there. Responsibility is there. I cannot make Ephesians 1 disappear because Revelation 22 makes my system uncomfortable, and I will not make Revelation 22 shrink because Ephesians 1 is inconvenient.4

The Book holds both without embarrassment. I think we should learn from the Book.

So this is the first stake in the ground: I do not believe election is a mistake, and I do not believe human response is theater. I believe God means what He says on both sides. If He has chosen not to show me the hidden machinery by which His sovereignty and my willing act meet without contradiction, I can live with that. The creature does not become wiser by demanding the Creator explain Himself past what He has revealed.

the old argument and the two ditches

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sources & notes

  1. Deuteronomy 29:29, on “the secret things” belonging to the LORD and the revealed things belonging to His people; Romans 11:33–36, on the unsearchable judgments and ways of God. The argument of this booklet is not that Scripture is unclear where it speaks, but that the believer should not claim access to a mechanism Scripture has not disclosed.
  2. The familiar “cookies on the bottom shelf” line is associated with H. A. Ironside and was remembered by J. Vernon McGee as formative for his own plainspoken Bible teaching. See Thomas L. Constable, Notes on 1 Corinthians, citing McGee's recollection; cf. J. Vernon McGee, Thru the Bible. The phrase is used here for the same principle: deep doctrine ought to be made understandable without being made shallow.
  3. On the church's careful confession of mysteries it did not pretend to comprehend exhaustively, see the Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed (A.D. 381) on the Trinity and the Definition of Chalcedon (A.D. 451) on the one Person of Christ in two natures. Standard texts are collected in Philip Schaff, The Creeds of Christendom, vols. 1–2. The analogy is limited: election and human responsibility are not another ecumenical creed, but the historical example illustrates the legitimacy of confessing revealed truths without claiming to explain the divine mode of their union.
  4. Ephesians 1:3–5; John 6:37, 44; Revelation 22:17; 2 Corinthians 5:19–20. The sovereignty/responsibility tension is also visible in Acts 2:23, where the crucifixion occurs by “the determinate counsel and foreknowledge of God” and yet is charged to the moral responsibility of those who acted.
  5. The Five Articles of the Remonstrance were presented in 1610 by followers of Jacobus Arminius after his death in 1609. The Synod of Dort met at Dordrecht in 1618–1619 and answered the five disputed points in the Canons of Dort. See Philip Schaff, The Creeds of Christendom, vol. 3; and the Canons of Dort, Introduction. The Canons are formally arranged under four heads because the third and fourth disputed points are combined, though they respond to five Remonstrant articles.
  6. The Remonstrance, Article IV, explicitly attributes the beginning, continuance, and accomplishment of spiritual good to grace while affirming that grace may be resisted; Article I makes election conditional upon faith, and Article II teaches that Christ died for all men while forgiveness is enjoyed by the believer. On the Reformed side, Westminster Confession of Faith 3.6 says God foreordains the means as well as the end, and Westminster Larger Catechism 155 calls the preaching of the Word an effectual means of salvation. This is why ordinary confessional Calvinism must be distinguished from hyper-Calvinism.
  7. The five disputed heads commonly summarized by the English mnemonic TULIP correspond to total depravity, unconditional election, limited or particular atonement, irresistible or effectual grace, and perseverance of the saints. The mnemonic is later than the Synod itself; the Canons of Dort should be read in their own wording rather than treated as though the English flower were the original document.
  8. Canons of Dort, Second Head of Doctrine, Articles 3 and 8: Article 3 describes the death of the Son of God as of infinite value and “more than sufficient” for the sins of the whole world, while Article 8 limits its saving efficacy, by divine intention, to the elect. This distinction is important to a fair statement of particular redemption. Cf. Westminster Confession of Faith 3.6 and 8.5–8.
  9. John 3:16; 1 John 2:2. On kosmos (“world”) and hilasmos (“propitiation”), see W. E. Vine, An Expository Dictionary of New Testament Words, entries “World” and “Propitiation”; and standard Greek lexicons. Particular-redemption interpreters have historically read “whole world” in ways consistent with a definite atonement; the body of the booklet states that counter-reading rather than pretending it does not exist.
  10. 1 Timothy 2:1–6; Hebrews 2:9; 2 Peter 2:1; 1 Corinthians 6:20. On pantas anthrōpous (“all men”) and agorazō (“buy, purchase”), see W. E. Vine, Expository Dictionary, entries “All,” “Buy,” and related terms. For the classic Reformed case for definite atonement and its readings of universal-language texts, see John Owen, The Death of Death in the Death of Christ; compare the Canons of Dort, Second Head.
  11. The Five Articles of the Remonstrance, Article II, expressly distinguish the universality of Christ's death from the actual enjoyment of forgiveness by the believer. The distinction between provision and application is also reflected in many non-Calvinist evangelical treatments of the atonement. The position in this booklet is therefore universal atonement, not universalism.
  12. H. A. Ironside, In the Heavenlies: Practical Expository Addresses on the Epistle to the Ephesians, on Ephesians 1:3–6, pp. 27–29 in commonly circulated editions. Ironside pictures the gospel door with “Whosoever will, let him come” on the outside and the truth of being “chosen in Christ before the foundation of the world” discovered from the inside. The illustration is paraphrased here rather than quoted at length.
  13. Westminster Confession of Faith 3.6; Westminster Larger Catechism 155; Canons of Dort, Third and Fourth Heads, Article 17. Historic Reformed theology does not treat gospel preaching as dispensable because election is certain; it expressly identifies the Word and its proclamation among the appointed means by which God gathers His people. Hyper-Calvinism is therefore a distinct error and should not be used as a synonym for Calvinism.
  14. The Reformed distinction between the universal outward call and the effectual call is stated in Westminster Larger Catechism 67–68 and Westminster Confession of Faith 10.1–2. The Canons of Dort likewise command the gospel promise to be announced “without differentiation or discrimination to all nations and people” to whom God sends the gospel (Second Head, Article 5), while maintaining definite saving intent in Article 8. The disagreement pressed in this booklet concerns the scope of the atoning intention, not whether Calvinists may sincerely evangelize.
  15. Canons of Dort, First Head, Articles 12–16, directs believers away from anxious speculation about the secret decree and toward the fruits and promises by which assurance is ordinarily known; Westminster Confession of Faith, ch. 18, treats assurance at length. The personal example in the body is offered as pastoral experience, not as proof that all hearers of limited atonement respond in the same way.
  16. Isaiah 55:1; Revelation 22:17; John 6:44; John 16:8; Ephesians 2:1–10. The position taken here is that grace precedes and enables the sinner's response, so that faith is no ground for boasting; compare 1 Corinthians 4:7 and Ephesians 2:8–9. Norman L. Geisler develops a related “balanced” account in Chosen But Free: A Balanced View of God's Sovereignty and Free Will, 3rd ed. (Bethany House, 2010).
  17. John 5:40; Acts 7:51; Matthew 23:37; with Romans 10:9–17. These texts are cited for the reality of the biblical summons and human responsibility. They do not by themselves settle every philosophical question concerning the will, which is precisely why the booklet resists making a philosophical mechanism the master of the biblical language.
  18. C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity, Book IV, ch. 6, “Two Notes,” on the danger of being driven from one error into its opposite. Lewis was discussing individualism and totalitarianism, not the Calvinist-Arminian controversy; the passage is used here only as an analogy for theological overcorrection.
  19. Matthew 28:18–20; Romans 10:13–17; 1 Corinthians 3:5–7. The Great Commission joins Christ's universal authority to the church's commanded going, while Romans 10 places preaching and hearing among the ordinary means by which men come to faith. The sovereign Giver of the increase does not cancel the planter and waterer; He appoints their work.
  20. J. Vernon McGee, Thru the Bible radio teaching, illustration recalled by the author: God’s sovereign purpose compared to a train certain to reach its appointed destination while the passengers aboard it make genuine choices as they travel. The attribution is to McGee’s oral teaching rather than to a specific printed transcript or volume.
  21. Norman L. Geisler, Chosen But Free: A Balanced View of God's Sovereignty and Free Will, 3rd ed. (Bethany House, 2010), which argues for a mediating account affirming divine sovereignty and meaningful human choice. The present booklet is not a summary of Geisler and does not adopt every formulation in his work; the recommendation is for further study alongside the Scriptures and serious representatives of the Reformed and Arminian traditions.
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