Letter of Great Interest on the Evangelical Label to to the Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals from Arminian Professor with Editor's Response

A One-Sided Reformation?

I'm sorry that I cannot be as enthusiastic about your endeavors as some of your other correspondents. A strong emphasis on the Reformation "solas" and on the sole sufficiency and efficacy of divine grace is wonderful--and I applaud that as an evangelical Baptist. But your particular way of interpreting and expressing "Reformation truth" is one-sided. Authentic evangelical Arminian and even Wesleyan theology seems to be excluded by your propaganda even though they share your enthusiasm for and commitment to the great truths of the Reformation. It seems to me (and most other non-Calvinist evangelicals I know) that you want to divide the evangelical Protestant house and gain a monopoly on the labels "Protestant" and "Evangelical" for one party only--your strongly Augustinian-Calvinistic theological orientation. Where, then, would you classify John and Charles Wesley in the historical heritage of Evangelicalism? What about their myriad evangelical following? Are all who espouse prevenient grace and free will (NOT Semi-Pelagianism!) rather than deterministic divine sovereignty heretics? Defective evangelicals? What?

I'm afraid that your movement verges on sectarianism--not because it promotes Reformation truth uncompromisingly, but because it narrows that truth down to one party or camp within the Evangelical Protestant heritage and movement. The vast majority of members of denominations and churches affiliated with the National Association of Evangelicals are not Augustinian-Calvinists (with regard to divine sovereignty), yet your program would seem to aim at marginalizing and even demeaning them as somehow defective in their evangelicalism. In my opinion, at least some of your writings betray a willful and mean-spirited distortion of other evangelicals' contributions and beliefs. I call on you to engage in dialogue rather than polemics with your non-Calvinist evangelical brothers and sisters. Or do you consider Nazarenes, Pentecostals, Free Will Baptists, and all others who do not agree with your particular interpretation of Reformation theology as cultists? I hope not. (But I suspect so.)

I take no back seat to you with regard to evangelical theological commitment and fervor. Nor do my numerous non-Calvinistic evangelical colleagues across the broad spectrum of those who are equally committed to the Lordship of Jesus Christ, the authority of Scripture, the necessity of conversion-regeneration-justification by grace through faith alone. It is all too easy for you and some of your correspondents to criticize Arminians and Wesleyans for "legalism" without noticing or acknowledging that many within classical Calvinist denominations also tend toward legalism. (I know because I have many relatives in classical Reformed Churches and at least some of them seem to believe that the Ten Commandments form the true core of the Christian gospel!) Grace lies also at the heart of evangelical Arminian and Wesleyan theologies. In salvation's beginning and continuance and completion it is ALL OF GRACE! But that does not exclude free will and cooperation of the human agent with the initiative and enablement of grace.

My question to you is this: Do you intend to exclude evangelical Arminians and Wesleyans from the Evangelical Tent? I hope not, but I fear that you do.

Roger E. Olson, Ph.D.
Professor of Theology
Bethel College and Seminary

Editor's Response
First off, this is the sort of lively yet thoughtful letter we invite. Professor Olson has raised some important questions that demand an extended response. Let me say at the outset that in our day, convictions that would simply have been regarded as broadly "evangelical" are now frequently relegated to the back seat called "Calvinism." However, as regular readers of this magazine know, we have been engaged in a collaborative effort for some years now with non-Calvinists. This magazine and the organization producing it include Lutherans, Episcopalians, Baptists, Congregationalists, Presbyterian, and Reformed writers. We have even engaged in appreciative public conversations with Thomas Oden (United Methodist) and, before Professor Olson's letter arrived, had included a positive review of another United Methodist's book in this very issue.

Our track record clearly proves that we are not trying to hijack the evangelical label for sectarian use. Rather, we are attempting to restore some substance to the term in an effort, more importantly, to help the whole church recover the heart and soul of the Christian message. At the end of the day, it doesn't matter what "evangelical" means as much as the meaning of the evangel itself. Professor Olson seems too concerned with the highly charged political rhetoric of parties, camps, the National Association of Evangelicals, and "marginalization," accusing us of a desire to "divide the evangelical Protestant house and gain a monopoly on the labels ŒProtestant' and 'Evangelical' for one party." One thing none of us at modernReformation cares much about is maneuvering, posturing, or gaining control of the evangelical movement (or, more accurately, movements). Our loyalties are to our various churches, not to movements. Our concern is neither to unite nor to divide the evangelical movement, but to bring these issues to the front burner again so that people can hear the clear note of Christ alone and grace alone in our churches once more. This is a challenge that we are offering not only to Arminians, but to our own communions that are increasingly abandoning this certain sound. And clarity has a habit of bringing differences to the surface, since, as Bacon put it, "All colors look alike in the dark."

Professor Olson has correctly noted that we do make a "cut" in this periodical along Augustinian lines. Of course, everybody makes a cut somewhere, and we are convinced that Dr. Clark Pinnock is correct when he observes (though he also, unfortunately, lauds) the demise of Augustinian theology in evangelicalism. Pinnock and Olson have collaborated together in the interest of furthering this trend, and I cannot see how our opposition to their project can be regarded as any more narrow-minded than their own opposition to classical Augustinian teaching. Between defending Augustinianism and its rivals, there should be no doubt as to which has a sectarian pedigree. Since the sixth century Council of Orange, catholic Christianity has affirmed the position we defend, a position abandoned by Rome at Trent and by Arminius and his followers. We are not challenging an Arminian's use of the label, "Christian," but question how, if historical usage defines terms at all, the Arminian system can be regarded as genuinely "evangelical."

In my estimation, Professor Olson reflects a symptom of the problem that evangelicalism now faces as a movement or swirling eddy of movements. He appreciates our emphasis on the "sole sufficiency and efficacy of divine grace" and "the great truths of the Reformation," but is frustrated that we exclude Wesleyan-Arminian interpretations from our editorial scope. Surely he is aware that the classic Wesleyan-Arminian teaching summarized in the standard systems of Pope, Watson, Wiley, and Miley not only confuses justification with sanctification but prefers moral influence and governmental theories of the atonement to the substitutionary view. I am certain that Professor Olson knows that Wesleyan-Arminian doctrine repudiates monergism (i.e., the view that God is the sole efficient cause of our salvation), in favor of a position that makes God's electing grace dependent on human action, new life dependent on free will, final justification dependent on obedience, and insists that truly committed Christians can live above all known sin. Confessional Reformed folk are not the only ones who have a problem with this system; it is also repudiated by Lutherans as a challenge to the heart of Luther's message.

If Professor Olson has now conceived of a case that can be made that might reconcile Arminian principles with classical evangelical theology, we are eager to hear it. Otherwise, it is simply a matter of historical theology that Arminianism was repudiated by every group with roots in the magisterial Reformation: Lutheran, Reformed, Presbyterian, Anglican, Congregationalist, and the early Baptists. Isn't it simply a case of bigotry on our part if we remain separated from Rome over these issues and yet regard these views as sufficiently evangelical when articulated within our own circles? In the case of some within this tradition, not even original sin is left standing. When that occurs, there is no question that this is a full-blown Pelagianism that is not only condemned by Protestants but by Rome.

For my own part, I cannot see how Arminianism can evade the charge of Semi-Pelagianism, whether it goes by the label "evangelical" or not. I do not doubt the honesty of Arminians who claim to believe in grace as much as a Reformed or Lutheran person. After all, lex orandi, lex credendi, the way a person prays is the way a person believes, and no doubt some Arminians sound more like the publican (as opposed to the Pharisee) in their prayers than some of the most thorough-going Augustinians. Sound theory does not guarantee sound practice ex opere operato.

But do Arminians embrace the "solas" (only's) of the Reformation? How do we square the evangelical notion of sola Scriptura with Wesley's Quadrangle of Tradition, Reason, Scripture, and Experience, which a respected Methodist theologian has himself recently cited as a culprit in the liberalism of the United Methodist Church? Or sola gratia, when, at the end of the day, one's salvation is conditioned on the extent of one's cooperation with grace? Is sola fide really affirmed when Arminian evangelicals, from John Wesley to Fuller Seminary's Russell Spittler warn, in the words of the latter, "Simultaneously justified and sinful? I wish it were so. I simply fear it's not"? Or when 86% of America's professing evangelicals say that in salvation "God helps those who help themselves"? And can we really affirm soli Deo gloria (to God alone be glory) when we place the efficient cause of salvation in the hands of free will rather than in God's gracious work?

I wonder if Professor Olson regards J. I. Packer as sectarian or wanting to monopolize the label "evangelical" for one party (perhaps the Anglican wing) in his following remark distinguishing Reformed from Arminian theology:

The difference between them is not primarily one of emphasis, but of content. One proclaims a God who saves; the other speaks of a God who enables man to save himselfŠ. The two theologies thus conceive the plan of salvation in quite different terms. One makes salvation depend on the work of God, the other on a work of man ("Introductory Essay" in John Owen's The Death of Death in the Death of Christ).

Reformed and Lutheran folks, of course, have heated debates over universal grace, but they agree on the central evangelical principle that Arminianism denies: God alone saves. Arminians can affirm this in their private prayers, personal testimonies, and public worship, but it is clearly denied in their doctrinal system. Either God alone saves or salvation depends also on human willing and running. I am willing to stand corrected if Professor Olson should find a single Arminian systematic theology that denies the latter. And if he reminds us that Arminian theology affirms the necessity for grace before we can do anything, my response is that this is not new news. This was Rome's position from the Reformation to the present and this is why both Rome and Arminianism have to be regarded as Semi-Pelagian rather than Pelagian.

If the evangelical view is identified with the Reformation's view, the Arminian conception is not adequately evangelical. This hardly means that we do not consider Arminians brothers and sisters and we have never written or published the implied or explicit view that Wesleyan Arminians are "cultic," an unreasonable suggestion, to say the least.

Our course can only be regarded as sectarian if the term "evangelical" no longer applies to those who embrace the distinctives of Reformation theology. If "evangelical Catholic" is now a legitimate phrase, surely "evangelical Arminian" should be as well. Nevertheless, we are calling our evangelical brothers and sisters to recover the older identification of the term. Read Baptist preacher Charles Spurgeon's criticisms of Arminianism, Lutheran dogmatician Francis Pieper's, or Anglican Bishop J. C. Ryle's. Were they sectarians for defending the Reformation's understanding of grace as the evangelical position, against Rome and Arminius? This is a long-standing debate and I suggest that we wade into it with the issues and not with over wrought rhetoric about who will be in charge or who is "sectarian." A movement whose identity is shaped by famous personalities, trendy worship forms and theologies, and loosely affiliated parachurch ministries is not in a good position to argue that point with churches bound to the catholic creeds and historic confessions.

One final note: Professor Olson is sadly correct about legalistic Calvinists. If we're going to be truly motivated by a passion for evangelical essentials instead of party bigotries, we have to accept our lumps. Too often, the grace of the gospel, which Calvinists cherish with other brothers and sisters, is held in theory but denied in practice. How much more reprehensible it is to hold such a high view of God's grace in theory, only to suppress it in preaching, worship, evangelism, and our daily living. Reformed theology, as illustrated in the writings of Calvin and his successors and as taught in its confessions and catechisms, is clearly antithetical to legalism. There is nothing in its theory that would countenance the slightest form of this pernicious heresy. But, alas, theory and practice are often divorced and sometimes a legitimate point in the system is unhinged from the whole and given a priority that mis-shapes its message. Calvinism has been vilified as antinomianism by the likes of Wesley and Finney, and as legalism by many contemporary fundamentalists who, ironically, do not believe that the moral law is applicable to Christians, while substituting their own prohibitions. But within these extremes, there are those of us who do fit the description supplied by Professor Olson.

In some cases, those who hold Arminian principles have ended up defending in practice that which is demanded in our own theology. Legalism is not only apparent in Arminian circles, where human willing and running are given an efficacy that we do not accept, but is seen in some forms of pietism and hyper-puritanism within our Reformation communities. It shows us just how correct Spurgeon was in saying that we are all born Pelagians and something of it remains in us until we die. We do not live up to our confession. We have much more to confess, such as the tendency to take credit for believing in the "solas," including (ironically), "to God alone be glory" and lording it over others instead of showing the same patience that God shows us.

For Arminians, we only ask that they read on with a willingness to consider our arguments. For ourselves, we do hear the objection and beg God to always give us the grace to put our theology to better use.

Source: Modern Reformation Magazine
http://www.modernreformation.org/mr97/marapr/mr9702letters.html