So you think you’re a Protestant?

For far too long, people who claim to reject Rome have been calling themselves Protestant. We have let people think that rejecting the robes and the confessional, spurning the blasphemy of the Mass and Mariolatry somehow earns you membership in the camp of Hus, Luther, Knox, Calvin, Spurgeon, Tyndale and so on. However, if you ask most Christians today whether they’d side with Luther and the Protestants, or Erasmus and the Catholic doctrine*, you would find many so-called Protestants running back to Rome and her apostasy.

*Please note, we are aware that Erasmus was a humanist scholar, not a faithful Roman Catholic, but Erasmus’ view on the will is firmly in agreement with that of Rome, and as such he is an appropriate figure to use in this antithesis.

Let’s play a little game. Read the following description of natural human will, and ask yourself whether or not you think it is biblical, and then make an educated guess about whether it was Luther or Erasmus who gave it.

“It is a power in the human will, by which, a man may apply himself to those things which lead unto eternal salvation, or turn away from the same.”

What do you think? More importantly, what does Scripture teach? Does a man or woman have the ability within themselves, outside of the working of God, to do those things which lead unto salvation, or to successfully resist the working of God unto salvation?

That was Erasmus, not Luther, and yet many ‘Protestant’ Christians today would reject Luther and stand with Erasmus, and his unbiblical doctrine of the ‘freedom of the will’. Let me challenge you, astute reader. Do not assume that you are a protestant, just because you do not worship Mary. Lest we be accused of indulging in the ‘no true Scotsman’ fallacy here, we make a point of saying that there are many true Christians who are wrong, but are still truly Christian. This should be no surprise, because even amongst Reformed Evangelicals there exist definite differences, such as the baptism of infants, and both camps believe the other to be in sin, though still in the faith.

As a certain Press Secretary has infamously said, we will now ‘circle back’ to the first matter. The doctrine of the freedom or bondage of the will was the hinge on which the Reformation turned.

Let’s lay it out, clear and plain, so that it can be seen by all, like roadkill at midday on a desert highway. If people are born in a condition of innate spiritual freedom, such that they do not firstly need the Holy Spirit to do his work within them to produce the repentance that leads to faith, then all people everywhere could freely choose to become Christians. This assumption underlies the idea that is commonly referred to as ‘free will’.

On the other hand, if people are born in a state of innate spiritual bondage, such that they cannot and will not experience the repentance that leads to faith until the Holy Spirit effectually grants it to them, then God has the freedom to show mercy to whom he will show mercy, and to show grace to whom he will show grace, because the salvation of each individual relies entirely on his working, and will not be initiated by any other means. This assumption is properly basic to all of Reformed thought, and unsurprisingly, is a doctrine that is found basically all over Scripture.

This is the difference between the concept of ‘free will’ and the biblical doctrine of (as we call it) ‘creaturely will’. Today, many Christians promulgate the ‘Provisionist’ solution, which essentially says the following: that all people are born truly helpless and dead in sin, but that God has provided the grace necessary for all people to come to faith, should they appropriate that grace unto themselves. Suffice it to say that Provisionism, like so many other man-made religious systems, seeks to put the final control of salvation in the hands of man, not in the kind intention (εὐδοκία) and free will of God.

Where Rome tried to wash away original sin in infant baptism, Provisionism washes away the spiritual and noetic effects of sin with its impersonal and unspecific ‘grace’. To the one who has a nose, let him smell: this doctrine reeks of ‘prevenient grace’, another Popish fiction.

Since we are, as one might put it, in for a penny, let’s put the final nail in the coffin and soundly organise all of our eggs into the same basket before we wash it under the bridge and off the duck’s back. This author failed to work ‘in for a pound’ into that rather confusing daisy chain of sayings, but we hope that the patient reader will let it slide.

Provisionism is not more loving than the biblical doctrine of Complete Atonement. Do not be deceived by the rhetoric, pungent as it may be:

“You Calvinists believe that God doesn’t really love everyone, and that he doesn’t even give everyone a chance to be saved! What’s the point of evangelism?”

“Why, Mr Provisionist, you are one to talk. In your system, God doesn’t really choose anyone at all. He just puts the grace out there, like so many vouchers in post office boxes, or LCMs in unsuspecting lunchboxes, or Myki cards in unattended wallets-”

“-Get to the point”

“Oh as you wish. I’m simply saying that in your system, Jesus did not have you in mind at the cross. In your system, dear Provisionist, he died to save a category, not sinners whom he knew beforehand, as the Scriptures say. You cannot say that Jesus had you in mind when he bore the wrath of his father for sin. He didn’t choose you. He chose a category.”

“But John 3:16!”

This fictional conversation is only so fictional, because it rather truthfully represents the trajectory of many such real life conversations. See, the Provisionist feels that it is unfair for God to save some and not make salvation possible for others. In their zeal to defend their concept of God’s omnibenevolence, they sacrifice God’s freedom to save whom he will, and to harden whom he will. Whereas, on the other hand, the Calvinist seeks to defend God’s freedom in election, and to remind his interlocutor that God is not required to show grace to anyone. That’s why it’s called grace.

It would be a fair objection, and worthy of mention, that there is more to being a Protestant than the doctrine that the human being is born with a will that is in bondage to sin, and unable to please God (Rom 8:7). Justification by faith, Christ as our sole mediator before God, and the supremacy and sole infallibility of Scripture are all essential and definitional to the Christian faith.
So, where do you fall? Be honest with yourself. If you were in the Reformation, would you have stood against the Reformers, or with them? Do you prize most highly the vain idea that humans have the capacity within themselves to exercise saving faith, or will you submit to the humbling but God-glorifying reality that you were unable to so much as flutter your eyelashes (spiritually speaking) when God saved you, and created new life within you? May we be semper reformanda, so that we can walk in the shoes of our great forebears, and trust the worthy saying: post tenebras lux.