What does the Bible say about Calvinism vs. Arminianism?

well howdy pastor mark driscoll here with this week's ask Pastor Mark if you've got a question send it into hello at Mark Driscoll dot org and I'll do my best to answer as many as I can this week let's get into Calvinism versus Arminianism people have been debating it for 400 plus years so why not keep the party going and this comes out of my recent preaching through the book of Galatians I'm almost done and I've had the honor of preaching over more than 20 years as a senior pastor dozens of books of the Bible verse by verse and I just love God's Word I love study and teaching preaching God's Word and and so as I'm going through Galatians a friend of mine is also preaching through Galatians he's like hey let's sit down do podcast so we met for a couple of hours no notes just a couple of friends riff and just sort of going down rabbit trails and in that multi-hour conversation there was a very brief window in which the issue came up regarding Calvinism and Arminianism and it caused some of my Michael my reformed friends be like what are you thinking and also some of you sent questions into the inbox and asked on social media so thank you for that and so what I'd like to do is just a little bit of sort of my ass to summarize the issue some of you know far more than me and some of you this is all new to you and everybody's in the middle and in the spectrum but for starters what we're talking about is something within Protestantism and Protestantism or the Protestant Reformation is a broad movement and so when I use the word reformed or I think of being reformed I think of the Protestant Reformation not necessarily a specific team or tribe or tradition within it because under the big umbrella of the Protestant Reformation or for example significant leaders like swingley or Calvin or Luther or or those who would follow some of the reform predispositions of Anglicanism there's lots of expressions today this would include reformed Baptists there's there's lots of teams and tribes and traditions under the big umbrella of the Protestant Reformation and they would have differences on a variety of issues but I would say that what often times whole historic Protestantism together of which I'm a part and I am reformed is the solace so grace alone faith alone Christ alone scripture alone to God be the glory alone those were I would say the big overarching principles of the big tent and then there were various nuanced positions on other issues by those who were under that tent well part of the debate really within the Protestant Reformation it continues to this day is a very important issue and that is how is someone justified in the sight of God if God is holy and righteous and good and we are sinful and fallen how can he declare us righteous right God's a perfect being heaven is a perfect Kingdom we're not perfect how in the world are we ever going to qualify to be in that place if the standard is perfection well the answer is that Jesus Christ died on the cross in our place for our sins and as a result there is an opportunity for a person through faith in the finished work of Jesus Christ to be justified declared righteous given the righteousness of Jesus Christ through faith and so within that the question is one of synergism versus moehner jism synergism means two people working together monetarism is one person working alone so if you think of it this way if I could use a simple analogy imagine someone's drowning alright and they're they're going to be rescued and or saved to use language of the Bible the question is did they raise their hand right the drowning victim and then God grabs their hand and then they lock arms and they participate in their deliverance they participate in their rescue because they reached up and someone reached down that would be the position of synergism that that we can reach up and that God will reach down and that together in some former fashion justification salvation will occur monir jism says no no we are not participating in our justification it is a one handed work of God it is something that God exclusively does and I would just say much of this goes all the way back to a guy like Augustine some of this is is really early in church history and theology and so you don't even necessarily have to be in one of those narrow particular lanes to believe in modernism but that's really the issue is is ultimately do we participate or does God do all of the work because if we do some of the work it seems possible that we could undo the work and if God does all the work it seems permanent well all of that results in a group forming and gathering and having time to put together their theological convictions in 1610 it was the remonstrants and I want to make note too that John Calvin died in 1564 and so what that means is you've got decades from the death of Calvin to the gathering of those who would come with the five points of our minion ism and then in response those who were Calvinistic followed in the traditions of Calvin they they would come along and they would have the refutation I'll explain that a moment of the five points of Calvinism and a lot of people think well the five points of Calvinism that must be Calvin it's it's decades after Calvin and it's it's a very debatable questionable point but some would even argue and I think fairly persuasively the Calvin may have not believed in limited atonement himself and so the five points of Calvinism they may be influenced by John Calvin and and they may not be completely from John Calvin so that being said you can love Calvin without being as excited about the five points of Calvinism well the five points of Calvinism back to my discussion thanks for the rabbit sorrow is it the remonstrants they came up with the five points of arminianism and they are I wrote them down free well that we have choice to choose or not choose God conditional election the election is not a pure free total grace that ultimately somewhat argue that God looked down the corridor of history and in his foreknowledge he knew those who would pick him so he picked them that would be an example of one nuanced version of conditional election Universal atonement this is really the big issue and the most debated point they would say Jesus died on the cross for everybody that when it says that God loved the whole world and gave his son that word world means everybody when it says that Christ died for all all means all so they would say when Jesus went to the cross he suffered and died in our place for our sins and that's true for everyone number four resistible grace that God can reach out to you but you can reject him and number five perseverance of some Saints that some Christians will persevere to the end faithful in their relationship with God others will go astray or become apostate to the degree that they lose their salvation and so ultimately it is possible to be justified and then unjustified it's not a necessarily permanent condition it can be undone by your behavior well concern around that led to something called the sin out of door that met many times over the years of 1618 1619 and they were responding to the points of arminianism so they came up with the five points of Calvinism in response as a refutation to the five points of arminianism everyone has total depravity that we are such sinners by nature and choice that we would never choose God because we're dead in our trespasses and sins total depravity unconditional election that God chose us of three pure grace there's there's nothing that we did to participate or earn or merit that favor in any regard l limited atonement that Jesus died on the cross for the sins of the elect not for the sins of all that's the most debated point of Calvinism and that is really the point where someone I'm a four-pointer on the five pointer that would often be the point that if someone is not going to accept all five points of Calvinism that is usually the leading candidate limited atonement irresistible grace that if God chooses you eventually he's going to get you is going to get you into relationship with him and perseverance of the saints that we are kept secure because of the finished work of Christ and you can't undo what Christ has done and so your eternity is secure and the true believers will persevere in that they will continue in their relationship with God they may have rebellious seasons but they'll return in repentance and so those are the two positions and within that there are many nuanced positions some points for consideration this is what I've thought for more than 20 years and what I've always held number one this is a protest within a protest so Protestantism literally means protest it's what we're against and then within that the Calvinistic response to our minion ism is a protest it's a rebuttal a reputation of our minion isms what you've got is you've got a protest within a protest and so my encouragement would be for all of us and I'm not saying there aren't you know things that we need to correct or stand against contending for the faith be is the language in the scriptures but I am saying that we need to be careful that that our primary energy is not always trying to figure out who or what am i against and who or what can I protest or critique right now we all do that I'm guilty of that for sure and there are times that that is necessary but if that's the whole disposition it might not be the best use of energy because ultimately it should be not who are against but who were for and not what we're against but what were for and people need not only to have a correction of faulty theology but also instruction in sound doctrine number two I believe that I believe that the five points of Calvinism start in the wrong spot because number one they start with man not God total depravity that's that's man's fallen state if we're gonna have a real God centered theology it seems like we should start with God not man and it seems like we should start where the Bible starts not where our opponents start I don't think the best way to do theology is to find some Vacaville statement that you don't agree with and then writing a refutation of it and making that your doctrinal statement and many would argue that was not the point of the five points of Calvinism but some use it in that regard and in that way when we open the Bible and and we look at the storyline of the Bible and and we did this practically I had the honor of co-authoring a book maybe almost a decade ago called doctrine it's about 400 pages like thousand footnotes it's a it's a an attempt to have a readable systematic theology I'm doing lectures on it right now at the Trinity Church and also revising it and rewriting that and hoping to reissue that with a lot more information and that was a broadly Protestant work but it wasn't a narrowly Calvinistic work and when it came to laying out the book doctrine the question was where to start so we started where we believe the Bible starts Genesis 1 in the beginning God where do you start God so we talked about the Trinity and God created so talk about creation and God made man and woman in His image likeness and now we're talking about gender and marriage and sexuality and Satan shows up now we're talking about the demonic and the war in heaven that comes to earth and the unseen realm and the supernatural nature of reality that we live in and then sin comes into the world then the human fall and then covenant God comes and makes a promise that he's going to send Jesus to fix it and so we work through the storyline of the Bible all the way up until our incarnation Jesus comes and then cross Jesus dies on the cross and then resurrection he defeats sin and death and then the pouring out of the Holy Spirit and the building of the church and ultimately in the end the kingdom of God comes with King Jesus and he writes all that is wrong and he redeems all that belong to him and so we tried to follow the storyline of the Bible and I would just encourage you if you have an honor of being a Bible teacher and I just want to thank you for giving me that honor today it's good to try and follow that storyline and start where the Scriptures start and and the five points of Calvinism start in Genesis 3 but there's a lot that happened in Genesis 1 and 2 that's very very important and I know my Calvinist friends in my love and I've learned a lot from and there's a lot I hold in common with would agree with me on that point in addition number 3 I think you got to be careful that you don't have total depravity be the sum total of your through Paula G the total depravity means our mind will emotions body all of our being was infected and affected by sin but that is not how the Bible primarily refers to a believer in Jesus Christ some I think it's 300 times if my memory is correct in the New Testament it refers to sinners but there's only three tax that are potentially referring to a believer as a sinner about sinners are believers and unbelievers we all sin all of sinned and fallen short of the glory of God anyone says they're without sin they're a liar the truth is not in them the Bible is clear that we're all sinners but our identity is not in what we have done but what Jesus has done and so the Bible refers repeatedly to God's people not primarily as sinners but as Saints and it tells us that we're holy were the beloved were the children of God were the sons of God we're the Bride of Christ all of that language is very warm and affectionate the Bible says then to let us only live up to what we have already attained and so Jesus has given us something positionally that we need to by the grace of God in the power of the Holy Spirit grow into practically and so that the problem can become if you're only anthropology for all of humanity including believers is total depravity and if your default verses like Jeremiah 17:9 the heart is deceitful and wicked above all things and you've sort of broad-brush all of God's children with that you could be negating their understanding of their new birth and their regeneration that they're a new creation in Christ that old things have passed away that old things are becoming new that ultimately they are born again of this spirit and I preached on this last Sunday and the result is that God gives them new desires new desires so that we can live passionately out of the desires of our heart which are the desires that the Holy Spirit puts in our heart and so for me as a pastor this is really practical and as a father it's super practical and that is once you are a new creation you get a new heart with that new heart comes new desires and new passions and new new powers to live in obedience to God so it's important to get our anthropology and then lastly there is a difference between systemic and biblical theology a biblical theology is literally just trying to work through all of the scriptures and we need systematic theology and everybody has one and systematic theology is where we take the various texts or concepts and we put them together thematically in categorically we all do that that's perfectly well and good the question is is your systematic theology over your Bible or is your Bible over your systematic theology if your systematic theology is over your Bible then anything that doesn't fit your system you're going to ignore it downplay it cut it out whatever the case may be because I'll just be honest there is no systematic theology that really has every verse of the scripture fit tightly into God tends to be a little free and and there are some points in the scriptures where whatever your position is you can't get everything in the Bible to get shoehorned into that category you can try really hard but God's Word is still free and if we have our systematic theology under our live achill theology then we'll allow more mystery will allow more questions to be I don't know maybe it's this maybe it's that without having to come down on a hard position and it's trying to be faithful to the entirety of scriptures not just a selection of scriptures and so just my encouragement as always I think biblical theology has to supersede systematic theology and I think what can happen is if we put systematic theology continually over the Bible it taints our reading of it we miss certain things because we don't have the lenses to see it and so within that within the reformed tradition of which I'm apart and I am reformed and I believe in modernism that we are saved by the work of God and kept by the work of God if I had to choose between the five points of our minyan ism and the five points of Calvinism I'd pick the five points of Calvinism because they're better but I don't quite frankly think that they're great and I think there's better ways to do the allergy but at the end of the day as well Martin Luther and John Calvin to the most towering figures in the ref Meishan they had some training as lawyers and so they tended to read the Bible through the lens of law and gospel through God's demands or failure and then the justification of Jesus Christ that's what you'd expect from somebody who was trained as an attorney they would gravitate toward the law so those from the reformed tradition tended not to dealt much into wisdom literature so the the reformers would work a lot in the Ten Commandments the law the laws of Moses the Old Testament regulations the gospel of Jesus Christ the fulfillment of Jesus obedience perfectly to the law I'm getting into a lot of that in Galatians right now but there were whole other parts of the Bible that weren't really delved into so proverbs Ecclesiastes Song of Solomon job those are wisdom books tended not to spend a lot of time there not as many commentaries sermons and so what I'm saying is let's deal with the whole Bible let's look at all the genres of literature and and law and gospel is a category so his wisdom and folly so his oppression and deliverance so is brokenness and healing so his truth and lies so his wisdom and folly there's all these different categories within the Bible and certainly long gospel is one but most assuredly not the only one in closing as I said I'm rewriting the doctrine book I'm lecturing on it and look forward to releasing it as a broadly reformed look not a narrowly Calvinistic book pray as well if you think about it I'm thinking about maybe preaching the book of Romans which would force me to really delve into some of this at a real deep level trying to figure out if and when to do that I've got an interesting trip coming up and I'll be touring some sites of the Reformation and I'm gonna bring a camera so a little sneak preview I'll do a little church history along the way and share some things that I'm learning and maybe would have be of encouragement to you and then lastly one of the issues that did come up in this discussion that presa painted this asked pastor Mark was about something called the father wound and I just finished the final edits in the audio book for a book called win your war and it's by my wife Grace and I and it's about the topic of spiritual warfare and and in that there's a whole chapter on the father wound and some of these other issues as well they're threaded through the book so rather than delving into that I'll just wait for the book to come out in October shameless plug it is available for pre-release on Amazon and I hope this is helpful and I am grateful for the opportunity to teach and I love you and I hope that this was a benefit thanks you

Channel: Real Faith by Mark Driscoll

Views: 45,088

Rating: 4.3440366 out of 5

Keywords: Mark, Driscoll, ministry, thetrinitychurch, scottsdale, arizona, bible, teaching, gospel, theology, jesus, biblestudy, faith, bibleverse

Id: KU0szpsemeU

Length: 20min 36sec (1236 seconds)

Published: Tue Jul 16 2019