Does a Classical Arminian view of grace (also) lead to a more missional worldview?

“What I've learned: a church's dominant soteriology

indelibly shapes its culture (the way people think about and do) for mission.”

                                     -Dr David Fitch

*For Part 1, "Does a Wesleyan view of grace lead to a more missional worldview?" click here.

In his journal article, "Regeneration and Resistible Grace: A Synergistic Proposal", Dr Adam Dodds—who seems to take a Classical/Reformed Arminian view of Prevenient Grace but without calling it that [1]—writes:

Therefore my proposal is to develop an understanding of regeneration that bears many similarities to Wesley’s but which identifies God’s prevenient grace as particular and not universal because God’s self-revelation through the missions of the Spirit and the Church is specific and not general, most obviously through the communication of the gospel. 

Saving faith follows the communication of the gospel (Rom. 10.13-15) and God has specifically ordained that the gospel be communicated through the Church.  

[...] the modus operandi of God’s prevenient grace is not by general but special revelation, for it is through the witness of the Church that God’s prevenient grace operates. [...] God’s prevenient, awakening and convicting grace acts through the Church’s sharing of the gospel. 

And concludes:

Finally, the fact that God’s prevenient grace that enables and causes belief in Christ is offered through the Church’s communication of the gospel is of immense missiological importance. As the Church carries out her missionary task she can be confident not only that Christ has died for all, but also that there is inherent power in gospel proclamation and demonstration, for it is through the Church’s mission that God makes His grace available and people are enabled to repent and believe, and thus experience regeneration/conversion. 

His full article is available in PDF here (this PDF link is from the author's biography at his church website here).

Interestingly, Dr Dodds does not seem to rely on any Classical/Reformed Arminian theologians (that I can recognize anyway), save Arminius himself (and perhaps Bangs and Pinnock, though I am not sure of the view of either), for the view he proposes even though on this point it is basically the same as that which they hold. Instead, he relies on many of the Reformed theologians who moved away from the traditional Calvinist view, including Newbigin, Brunner, Moltmann, Torrance, and Barth.

Here is the abstract: 

This paper presents a synergistic account of regeneration/conversion focusing on the resistibility of God’s grace and the nature of human participation in regeneration. The synergistic proposal is advanced whilst avoiding the twin dangers of monergism, in which God is the sole determinant of eschatological salvation and damnation, and Pelagianism, which undermines the gospel of grace. Differing crucially from John Wesley’s account of prevenient grace, I sketch the resistibility of God’s grace in divine providence and revelation thus establishing a pattern of divine working from which to interpret God’s resistible work in regeneration/conversion. I then give an account of human participation addressing the bondage and freedom of the will, the nature of human cooperation in regeneration/conversion, and how this is commensurate with salvation by grace through faith alone. Therefore, this accounts for God’s desire to save all and the fact that only some have responded in faith to Christ.

Endnote:

[1] For the difference between a Classical Arminian understanding of Prevenient Grace and a Wesleyan understanding, see my article: "An Introduction to Prevenient Grace".

Related Posts:

• Does a Wesleyan view of grace lead to a more missional worldview?
• Does a Corporate View of the Doctrine of Election lead to a more missional worldview?

Does a Corporate View of the Doctrine of Election lead to a more missional worldview?

*For Part 1, "Does a Wesleyan view of grace lead to a more missional worldview?" click here.

“Divine election has mission in view.”

                              -Dr Clark H Pinnock

I recently re-read Dr Pinnock’s contribution to the book Perspectives on Election (Find in a Library) and I found myself highlighting completely different areas from the first time I read it. His chapter is titled “Divine Election as Corporate, Open and Vocational”.[1] 

I wonder how anyone could read this chapter and afterwards not be convinced that the corporate view is a more missional; more Jesus-centred; more gospel-saturated—a more Biblical—understanding of election. 

As Dr Pinnock points out regarding the traditional view, “Everyone (I think) knows that election is not much preached about these days, and understandably so, because the traditional version contains little gospel.” (p 277)

But when we examine the Biblical idea of “election” we find just the opposite: “There is no hidden decree here but only good news through and through” (302). Dr Pinnock explains, "Election in the Bible has to do with God’s strategy for the salvation of the nations. The calling of a new people with its new way of being together in the world, this is God’s plan to turn the world right-side up.” (p 283) And: 

Election is not about the destiny of individual persons for salvation or damnation but about God’s calling a people who in the New Testament setting live according to the faithfulness of Jesus Christ and proclaim good news to the world. [...] The focus is not on the salvation of the elect body itself (though this is assumed) but on the hoped-for consummated new humanity. (276-277)

How is the idea of “election” used in the Bible?

First, we see it used throughout the Old Testament, where election was corporate and included all those connected to the covenant head (Abraham, then Jacob/Israel). Dr Pinnock writes:

God established a special relationship with Abram with world transforming potential. ... God committed himself to this covenant with Israel, a lowly tribe, and established a relationship which will eventually include all peoples.

...

God declares: “You shall be my treasured possession out of all the peoples. Indeed, the whole earth is mine, but you shall be for me a priestly kingdom and a holy nation” (Exod 19:5). The election is of a people (it is corporate); Israel is God’s holy people and treasured possession. ... God gave Israel a most-favored-nations status and for a reason. ... Israel was not called to an exclusive salvation but to a priestly vocation intended to bring the whole world to God.

...

They have been blessed, but with favor come expectations. God loves the people in Israel but has a ministry in mind for her, namely, a mediating role in the salvation of the world. Isaiah expresses the heart of it. Most succinctly God says, “I will give you as a light to the nations, that my salvation may reach to the ends of the earth” (Isa 49:6). The idea of a priestly kingdom is that Israel is going to serve as a representative people and will have a mediating role within the wider world. (p 284-285)

Does this same understanding of “election” follow into the New Testament?

Dr Pinnock continues, “The point and meaning of the election of Israel is now to be found in Jesus of Nazareth. ... In the New Testament the election is narrowed down to Jesus Christ himself.” (293)

We hear God’s voice at the baptism of Jesus: “You are my Son, the beloved; with you I am well pleased” (Mark 1:11). God says at the transfiguration: “This is my Son, My Chosen; listen to him” (Luke 9:35). This was no election to salvation (Jesus did not need be saved) but to service. In particular, he is the one through whom God brings salvation. Dying on the cross, he was taunted in these terms: “He saved others; let him save himself if he is the Messiah of God, his chosen one!” (Luke 23:35). (292)

...

Election is now seen as relative to the Son, to his mission, death, and resurrection. Jesus is “the elect” par excellence and God has chosen to elect us “in him.” We become part of the corporate “us” in the body of Christ. (294)

...

[I]t needs also to be understood as participation in Jesus Christ. By faith we share in his death and resurrection. ... In Christ, with Christ, into Christ, and through Christ--all such expressions speak of a new corporate reality. It is the presence of the risen Lord with us in the community which is his body and the realm of the Holy Spirit. ... It makes us all part of the process of world transformation. (294)

Notice how Gospel-centred this is! Further connecting the goal of election to the mission of God, Dr Pinnock writes:

This is how I see it: God's mercy is freely available and the elect body open to any and all who hear God's call. .... When a person believes in Jesus, he or she is incorporated in the body of Christ, and all that had been predestined for the group now applies to that person as well. God is sharing his life with the world and does so through the instrumentality of Jesus Christ and his church. (287- 288)

...

He has predestined the church to be conformed to the image of his Son and uses it to bear witness to the rest of humankind. The election of Israel, too, did not have in view only salvation; it also had in mind a priestly vocation, intended to bring the whole world to God. The love by which God loves the church is meant to spread into the whole world. The church is not a community intended for a salvation exclusively its own. It comes with a calling to reconcile the world to God through its praise and ministry.(288)

...

Those who know God are meant to make him known. Divine election is a wonderful gospel doctrine. God has unconditionally elected a people to serve as the vehicle of salvation for the whole of humanity.

...

God has chosen a people for the sake of all the nations. This interpretation of it upholds the perfect love and goodness of God. God's ways are fair; he saves all he possibly can. He does not leave anyone out arbitrarily. (313)

And finally, “God's desire to save all sinners is clear, and election does not contest it. Indeed, election is an instrument and means to make salvation happen.” (297)

Our calling is to be partners in God’s work of salvation. Mission and outreach, not salvation as our private possession, is the goal of election. Too often we have taken our own salvation to be the goal and assigned mission to paid emissaries. Too often we can be so busy edifying ourselves that we have little time for our neighbour. (287)

“The church is not an end in itself; it has been given the power of the Spirit in order to take the gospel to the world and to make disciples of every nation.” (285)

Endnote:

[1] In footnote 3 he recommends William W Klein’s excellent book The New Chosen People: A corporate view of Election, and in footnote 4 adds, “If my favorite exegetical source is WIlliam Klein, my favorite systematic authority is Wolfhart Pannenberg, Systematic Theology, vol. III (Grand Rapids: Eardmans, 1993).”  As I’ve mentioned before, Dr Klein’s book was the single biggest influence in my own adoption of the corporate election view.  

Related Posts:

• Clark H Pinnock, "From Augustine to Arminius: A Pilgrimage in Theology";
• Does a Wesleyan view of grace lead to a more missional worldview?;
• Lesslie Newbigin, "The Logic of Election", plus a free ebook;
• Lesslie Newbigin, “The Spirit and Our Election in Christ”;
• On Corporate Election.

Does a Wesleyan view of grace lead to a more missional worldview?

*For Part 2, "Does a Corporate View of the Doctrine of Election lead to a more missional worldview?" click here.

In his “Framework for Missional Christianity” series, Missional leader Alan Hirsch writes (bold mine):

One of the most basic assumptions of the incarnational missionary is to assume God is already involved in every person’s life and is calling them to himself through his Son. Our mindset should not be the prevalent one of taking God with us wherever we might go. Instead, our mindset should be that we join God in His mission.

This means that the missionary God has been active a long time in a person’s life. Our primary job is to try to see where and how God has been working and to partner with him in bringing people to redemption in Jesus.

This is basically the Wesleyan understanding of prevenient grace.

Of course, there is no need to call it Wesleyan. Nor is it unique to John Wesley. But unfortunately, this is not an assumption that all Christians share.[1]

How does Wesleyan Theology change our worldview?

I have written before that compared with Calvinism, I have found that Arminianism/Wesleyanism tends towards a more missional and evangelism-focused worldview.

While Calvinism tends towards a deterministic worldview, leading to what I and others have called a “theology of resignation”, Arminian theology encourages us to wear a “Gospel-lens” over all of our interactions, and thereby becomes a "theology of practice".[2]

As another Arminian blogger points out:

Arminianism, and especially Wesleyan-Arminianism, is missional in nature.  […] Arminianism very naturally gives expression to missionary endeavors, as God loves each and every person, and desires, according to Scripture, the salvation of each and every person. This biblical truth motivates the believer to witness to her or his faith in Christ toward the salvation of others. Evangelism is the heart of God and of Arminian theology.

United Methodist Pastor Omar Rikabi likewise has written, “the gospel doesn’t discount anyone from grace and salvation […] If we believe in prevenient grace—that Jesus is pursuing every person—we can only know what he’s up to by entering into their story through holy love.”

Arminianism, then, drives us, everyday and with every part of our lives, to engage those around us with the Gospel, knowing that God is already seeking them and we are cooperating in His pursuit.

What about Calvinism’s worldview?

Calvinist theologian Wayne Grudem, in his popular Systematic Theology, writes that Calvinism should encourage evangelism since it “guarantee[s] that there will be some success” (p 674):

Election is Paul’s guarantee that there will be some success for his evangelism, for he knows that some of the people he speaks to will be the elect, and they will believe the gospel and be saved. It is as if someone invited us to come fishing and said, “I guarantee that you will catch some fish – they are hungry and waiting.”

But does this actually work out in practice? In my estimation, this turns evangelism into a game: to a Calvinist’s mind, evangelism never really “snatch[es] them out of the fire” of judgment (Jude 23), since only those elected from eternity will respond, and those same will respond eventually to God’s irresistible grace/effectual call regardless. At best the Calvinist can take comfort in that they were the means God used to save the elect.  However, with this view, it is understandable why there is little real motivation for evangelism, especially in the face of persecution.  If it is only a game, maybe some might opt to play, but most seem content to pass.

What about those great gospel preachers Whitefield and Spurgeon?

As I’ve written before, both of these men were accused by the other Calvinists in their day of being “Arminian”-ish.

Leading Calvinist John Piper writes that to the Calvinist Baptists, “Whitefield’s Calvinism was suspect, to say the least, because of the kind of evangelistic preaching he did. The Particular Baptists spoke derisively of Whitefield’s ‘Arminian dialect.’”

Of Spurgeon, Baptist historian AC Underwood wrote (A History of English Baptists):

His sermon on “Compel them to come in” was criticized as Arminian and unsound. To his critics he replied: “My Master set His seal on that message. I never preached a sermon by which so many souls were won to God.... If it be thought an evil thing to bid the sinner lay hold of eternal life, I will yet be more evil in this respect and herein imitate my Lord and His apostles.”

Given these accusations from their contemporaries, it is obvious that Spurgeon and Whitefield were the exceptions to Calvinism’s practice of evangelism, rather than any sort of rule.


Endnote:
[1] While most Calvinists hold to "common grace", that is, grace common to all, this is not understood to have any salvific purpose.  As leading Calvinist scholar Tom Schreiner has written, "The Wesleyan understanding of prevenient grace differs from the Calvinistic conception of common grace in one important area. In the Calvinistic scheme common grace does not and cannot lead to salvation. It functions to restrain evil in the world but does not lead unbelievers to faith. For Wesleyans, prevenient grace may lead one to salvation."; see also: Ben Witherington, “The Reformed View of Regeneration vs. the Wesleyan Theology of Prevenient Grace”.

[2] For more on Wesleyanism vs Calvinism in practice, I recommend: Don Thorsen, Calvin vs Wesley: Bringing Belief in Line with Practice (Find in a library). You can read a review from Seedbed here, and one from Dr Olson here. There is also a short article online by the author here.

More resources:

• Charles Self, “Why John Wesley Matters for 21st Century Mission” (Missio Alliance);
• Alan Hirsch & Sean Gladding, "Missional Culture and Ministry Training" (Seedbed).

Related Posts:

• Lesslie Newbigin, "The Logic of Election", plus a free ebook;
• Recommended Sermon Series on Missions: Paul Lawler (Christ Church UMC), "Conversations: Living Intentionally in the Kingdom of God";
• Calvinism's Determinist Worldview: a "theology of resignation".

Lesslie Newbigin, "The Logic of Election", plus a free ebook

In his book, The Gospel in a Pluralist Society (1989), Reformed theologian & missionary Lesslie Newbigin includes a chapter entitled "The Logic of Election" (excerpts below) where he challenges the traditional Calvinist understanding of this doctrine.  Newbigin also addresses election in his books A Faith for this One World? (1961), and The Open Secret: An Introduction to the Theology of Mission (1978, 2nd ed. 1995).

From The Gospel in a Pluralist Society, pages 83-84 (bold mine):

What I have called the logic of election becomes very clear in that passage of the Letter to the Romans which has often been used as a basis for false teaching about election. I refer to Romans 9 through 11. For Paul it is axiomatic that God has chosen Israel uniquely among all the nations. And yet Israel has, as a nation, rejected God's Messiah. How is this to be understood? Does it mean that God's purpose has been defeated? No. How, then, are we to understand it? First, we must understand that God retains his freedom. Election does not give us claims against God. This has always been clear, for not all descendants of Abraham are chosen. No one can find fault with God for this. Like the potter working with his clay, God has the freedom to dispose of his creation as he will.  He could make some vessels for honor and some for destruction. Paul does not say that he has done so, but only that, if he did, we would have no ground for complaint. This is where false conclusions have been drawn from Paul. The whole passage makes clear that God has not done what he might have done. He has not made some for honor and some for destruction. What he has done is to consign all men to disobedience in order that he may have mercy on all (11:32). 

How can this be so? Again we ask: what is the meaning of Israel's rejection of the Messiah? Paul's answer is an astonishing one, but it fits exactly what I call the logic of election. God, says Paul, has hardened the heart of Israel so that the gospel which they reject will--so to say--bounce off to the Gentiles. This is exactly what has happening in city after city where Paul was turned out of the synagogues and went to the Gentiles. So the apostasy of Israel has brought salvation to the Gentiles. Does this mean that Israel is lost? No! Impossible! God can never cast off his chosen people. As proof of this he has kept a remnant (as so often in the past) as pledge that Israel is not rejected. The small company of believing Jews is the pledge that Israel is not cast off. And how is it all to end? The answer is that this hardening of the heart of Israel is until the full number of Gentiles come in, and so all Israel will be saved (11:25). In the end, therefore, it is through the Gentiles that Israel will be saved. So the logic of election is complete. I said earlier that in the biblical view there could be no salvation straight from above through the skylight, but only as we open the door to the neighbor whom God has appointed to be the bearer of salvation. It might have seemed that this was not quite true, since Israel, in the person of Abraham, received the message direct and not through any human messenger. Yes indeed, but we learn that it is not enough to be descendant of Abraham. They have no privileged status. In the end the chosen people, the elect, will have to receive salvation through the nonelect--the Gentiles. The logic of election is complete. Not just at the beginning but all the way until the end, salvation involves us with the neighbor whom God chooses to be the bearer of salvation, and there is no salvation otherwise.

Newbigin then exposes and corrects "false ideas which have gathered around the doctrine of election and which have made it unacceptable to many Christians as well as others" (p 84). These include:

• "The idea that election is election to privileged status before God. This false belief is something against which the prophets of Israel had constantly to contend" (p 84);
• "Where those who are chosen and called do what is commanded, they have a claim on God that others do not" (p 85), rather:

God does not choose to save some and to destroy others. (He has consigned all to disobedience in order that he may have mercy on all). His grace is free and sovereign, and there is no place for an exclusive claim on his grace, a claim by which others are excluded. (p 85-86)

• And (pages 86-87): 

[T]here is a way in which the doctrine of election has been distorted by separating it from the doctrine of Christ. We surely go far astray if we begin from a doctrine of divine decrees based on an abstract concept of divine omnipotence (a concept which all too obviously falls into Feuerbach's description of theism as the projection of our own human ego onto the heavens). We have to take as our starting point, and as the controlling reality for all our thinking on this as on every theological topic, what God has actually done in Jesus Christ. It is in Jesus Christ that, as Paul says, we are elect from the foundation of the world. Jesus is not a latecomer into the world. He is the one in whom and through whom and for whom we and all things exist. And the things that happened when he took our human nature and came among us as a man make clear what the meaning of God's election is. It is, as Paul says in the passage we have been looking at, that God has consigned all to disobediance that he may have mercy on all. The cross of Jesus is the place where all human beings without exception are exposed as enemies of God, and the place where all human beings without exception are accepted as beloved of God, objects of his forgiving grace. No one is excluded from the scope of that prayer: "Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do." It is for all. [...]    

To be chosen, to be elect, therefore does not mean that the elect are the saved and the rest are the lost. To be elect in Christ Jesus, and there is no other election, means to be incorporated into his mission to the world, to be the bearer of God’s saving purpose for the whole world, to be the sign and the agent and the firstfruit of his blessed kingdom which is for all. It means, therefore, as the New Testament makes abundantly clear, to take our share in his suffering, to bear the scars of the passion. It means, as Paul says elsewhere, to bear in the body the dying of Jesus so that the life of the risen Jesus may be manifest and made available for others. It means that this particular body of people who bear the name of Jesus through history, this strange and often absurd company of people so feeble, so foolish, so often fatally compromised with the world, this body with all its contingency and particularity, is the body which has the responsibility of bearing the secret of God’s reign through world history. The logic of election is all of one piece with the logic of the gospel. God’s purpose of salvation is not that we should be taken out of history and related to him in some way which bypasses the specificities and particularities of history. His purpose is that in and through history there should be brought into being that which is symbolized in the vision with which the Bible ends–the Holy City into which all the glory of the nations will finally be gathered. But–and of course this is the crux of the matter–that consummation can only lie on the other side of death and resurrection. It is the calling of the Church to bear through history to its end the secret of the lordship of the crucified.

Newbigin was Reformed but, as you can see, held a view of election which is much closer to Arminianism than 5-point Calvinism.  Dr Roger Olson has listed him among,

“revisionist Reformed” theologians who, in my estimation, have left the traditional Calvinist interpretation of God’s sovereignty behind even as they eschew the label “Arminian”... theologians deeply embedded in the Reformed tradition who would not want to be labeled “Arminian,” but whose theologies of God’s sovereignty are so highly modified and attenuated that calling them “Calvinist” would stretch that label to the breaking point. (link [1])

Free ebook: A Missional View of Election

I first came across Lesslie Newbigin on election in JR Woodward's free ebook A Missional View of Election: How a Robust View of Election Leads to a Holistic Gospel and Meaningful Missional Engagement, where Lesslie Newbigin's missional view of election is contrasted with the 5-point Calvinist view as represented by Wayne Grudem in his Systematic Theology.

You can download the full ebook for free from V3 Church Planting Movement here.

Endnote

[1] In another post, Dr Olson commented:

Many modern, “moderate” Reformed theologians (i.e., theologians who self-identify as Reformed and are recognized theologians of Reformed churches) sound more Arminian than Calvinist: Lesslie Newbigin, Jürgen Moltmann, Adrio König, Alisdair Heron, Alan P. F. Sell, et al. (My apologies for “outing them” as closet Arminians! I realize they would not want to be so identified but I find their soteriologies much closer to classical Arminianism than to, say, TULIP Calvinism.). (link)

And on his interpretation of Romans 9:

But, as I said earlier, it is not only Arminians who offer exegesis of Romans 9 that conflicts with traditional Calvinist interpretations.  Lesslie Newbigin, for example (hardly an Arminian!), also explained Romans 9 in the Arminian manner (which is also how it was interpreted by ALL the church fathers before Augustine!)–as dealing with nations and service rather than individuals and their salvation. (link)

Related Posts:

• Questions to ask as you approach Romans 9 (with a little help from recording artist Flame);
• Derwin Gray, "ROMANS 9 is a Part of a Larger Story”;
• Video: NT Wright on Predestination, Election and Romans 9;
• Alan Hirsch & Sean Gladding, "Missional Culture and Ministry Training" (Seedbed).