The following is a conversation between the blog author and Pastor Stephen Cavness of the Southern Baptist Convention. Pastor Cavness is not speaking officially for the SBC, but his doctrinal positions reflect the thinking of the Calvinist-leaning bloc of the largest Baptist and Protestant denomination in the United States. Although no studies that I am aware of have given an estimate of the proportion of the SBC that is Calvinist-leaning, I would wager that it is half if not more of the denomination. Have Lutherans and this large bloc of Baptists reached an historic point of agreement on the Doctrine of Justificaton/Salvation? Read for yourself and decide:
Clarification, July 12, 2012 When I state below that a true believer will believe, repent, be baptized, and follow Christ, I am not implying that these are actions that the sinner does of his own volition, nor am I stating that these events/actions must occur in a certain chronological order. I guess a better way to state this would have been to say, "these four actions will take place in the life of a true believer". God does all the action of salvation. Man's role is completely passive.
Clarification, July 12, 2012 When I state below that a true believer will believe, repent, be baptized, and follow Christ, I am not implying that these are actions that the sinner does of his own volition, nor am I stating that these events/actions must occur in a certain chronological order. I guess a better way to state this would have been to say, "these four actions will take place in the life of a true believer". God does all the action of salvation. Man's role is completely passive.
Pastor Cavness,
Is it possible for us to agree on the following statements?
A true believer, a true Christian, will:
--believe
--repent
--be baptized
--seek to follow God's will in his life
However, a sinner does not DO the above four steps to be saved.
The believer is not saved because HE made a decision to be saved.
The believer is not saved because he prayed a particular prayer, whether it be the Rosary or the "Sinner's Prayer".
The believer is not saved because he or his parents made the decison for him to be baptized.
The believer is saved by God's divine will alone.
Is it possible for us to agree on the following statements?
A true believer, a true Christian, will:
--believe
--repent
--be baptized
--seek to follow God's will in his life
However, a sinner does not DO the above four steps to be saved.
The believer is not saved because HE made a decision to be saved.
The believer is not saved because he prayed a particular prayer, whether it be the Rosary or the "Sinner's Prayer".
The believer is not saved because he or his parents made the decison for him to be baptized.
The believer is saved by God's divine will alone.
Gary
blog author
i can agree with those statements... (assuming a caveat, that i think you would agree with, that if something hinders baptism before death, it does not "unsave" or disprove one's salvation, a'la thief on cross. of course, this should be seen as the exception rather than the rule)
again i would emphasize that yes, scripture teaches that it is god who saves, but it also teaches that when regeneration occurs, the person desires to be saved and so he/ she repents and believes. god is still the initiator and giver of faith/salvation, but he does not save us apart from any involvement from the individual. dead in sin, unable to "chose" god- yes. but once we are made alive - we do obey the command to "repent & believe".
stephen cavness
cave city baptist church
southern baptist convention
I think that most Lutherans would agree with what you have just said.
Yes, if someone believes in Christ, repents
of his sins, but then is killed before being able to be baptized, Lutherans
believe that person will still go to heaven. He became a Christian when he
believed.
I think that most Lutherans could agree with your second paragraph also. Of course the sinner is involved in his salvation, but in the Lutheran view it is a passive involvement.
In our view, the sinner does not make a decision to be saved and then believes and repents. The sinner believes and repents because God has quickened him to believe and repent. Being quickened by God, believing and repenting occur simultaneously.
God does not partially quicken someone so that they can make a decision. They are either quickened, spiritually alive (saved) or they are spiritually dead. Someone who is dead cannot make a decision. When a sinner is made spiritually alive, and his eyes are opened, he believes and repents.
Lutherans and Calvinist-leaning Baptists may disagree about whether or not God chooses to save some people by the power of his Word at their infant baptism, but it seems we do agree that we are saved by God's divine will alone, not by our decisions.
Gary
Blog author
[gary wrote]In our view, the sinner does not make a decision to be saved and then believes and repents. The sinner believes and repents because God has quickened him to believe and repent. Being quickened by God, believing and repenting occur simultaneously.[end gary]
ReplyDeletei can agree with this. i was simply making thepoint that God doesnot save us without any desire on our part to be saved, or without any willing obedience on our point.
As to the number of "calvinist" or "calvinist leaning" people in the SBC:
The SBC has a very strong reformed heritage (though many refuse to admit it), but in the early 20th century its influence began to diminish and continued to do so through the 1980's. But since then, there has been something of a resurgence and "reclamation" of historic SBC beliefs in regard to soteriology, ecclesiology, etc. Recent surveys conducted by an SBC entity has found that while still aminority group, reformed theology is growing in number and influence in the SBC.
I would also add, that many who are reformed in these ways,like myself, have no desire to push it (a "system")as an agenda or force it down anyone's throat.
I never talk about it from the pulpit,and have only recently had any discussions about it with any of my church members, and only then it was because they came to me with questions.
It is more than unfortunate that there are those who seek to vilify those who are reformed in their soteriology, etc. as those who are militant with their beliefs and are unevangelistic. This is simply not the case with the vast majority of reformed people i know in the SBC. In fact, I don't know that I have ever met or come in contact with an actual "hyper-calvinist". It is time for the strawmen/ boogeyman caricatures to stop.
It is also a shame that there may be some who are reformed that have become so "tribal" that they won't work with anyone who doesn't line up with them 100% in every detail of theology.
For me and other "reformed" people that I know of, we are more than willing to work alongside any who get the gospel right and desire to share it indiscriminately in our communities, regions, and around the world. We have no agenda other than to carry out the Lord's Great Commission.
stephen cavness
I was baptized as an infant and raised in the LCMS. With all respect Gary, what happened to me when, at the age of 26, in my LCMS, I was led to repent and led to give my life to God. What I always felt I was missing, which was actually knowing God was there, became alive in me at that point and the Bible opened up to me. Why did this happen then as I was always a baptized steady church member and loved God?
ReplyDeleteI sincerely believe that you had a very intense experience when at age 26 you "repented and gave your life to God".
DeleteWhen I was age 9 and again when I was in my teens, I too experienced born again experiences where I repented and "gave my life to Christ". Both times I felt an initial rush of emotion, but both times this intense feeling faded over a period of time.
This fading of my intense feelings of "being saved" caused me to doubt whether I had truly repented; truly believed;truly had enough faith---had I really been saved? I drifted away from God bewildered by why He didn't sustain these intense feelings of being saved like He seemed to do in other people.
Do you see the problem here? We both had the same evangelical "born again" experience. We both genuinely repented and believed, but your intense feelings of being "really saved" lasted while mine didn't .
Is our salvation based on our feelings? I don't think you will find anywhere in the Bible that supports that idea.
How is every sinner who becomes a Christian saved? By having an intense emotional experience? No. We are saved by the divine will of God alone, who quickens us (makes us spiritually alive), at a time of his choosing, to believe, repent, be baptized, and follow Him for the rest of our lives.
I am happy for you that you have such intense feelings regarding your salvation. But I would encourage you not to use your feelings as proof of your salvation. Use God's Holy Word as proof of your salvation. Your faith, belief, and repentance are signs to you that our God keeps his promises, he keeps his word. He died for you, he bought you with his Holy blood, and he and he alone decided to save you. Did he save you at your infant baptism or at age 26? I don't know. But it is your faith and repentance that are signs of your salvation, not your feelings.
I didn't mean to give the impression that these feelings stayed with me. They lasted for awhile and during that time I KNEW God was there. I wouldn't be searching as to why or what happened if these feeling were still there because when they were, I KNEW. Your answer to me is very encouraging as I have been 'thru the mill' spiritually. I agree one can not base their relationship to God on feelings but maybe I don't really know that yet.
DeleteI will pray for you, my friend. Look to God's Word, not to your feelings. Your feelings are human and therefore, at times, weak and insecure.
DeleteGod's Word is all-powerful, never-changing, a solid rock upon which to place our faith. In his Word he has promised, "I will never leave thee nor forsake thee.
God be with you!
Clarification by blog author on this post/topic, July 11, 2012, 10:00 PM, Pacific
ReplyDeleteJust because I listed "believe, repent, be baptized, and seek to follow God's will..." in that sequential order DOES NOT mean that I think that salvation occurs in that exact step-wise order.
As a Lutheran I believe that belief, repentance, and baptism can occur simultaneously as in an infant's baptism. God does the saving. He can choose whatever order of these four actions that He, by his divine will, chooses. This is why I also believe that an adult nonbeliever can experience belief and repentance simultaneously when God elects to quicken him, prior to him having the opportunity to be baptized.
The sinner, who is spiritually dead, does not decide to believe first, and then repent. Quickening, belief and repentance happen all at once as they are all free gifts from God, not works of man that he musters up from his own human capabilities.
Gary -
ReplyDeleteA true believer will . . . uh . . . well . . . gee . . . BELIEVE!
With that, as I have pointed out thus far, comes "being changed" (the actual meaning of repentance, and passive in tense), the desire to be baptized (witness Stephen and the Ethiopian), and sanctification/theosis - the ardent striving, AFTER coming to faith, to become perfect as the Father in Heaven is perfect.
There is no specific order necessary, because there is no specific order. It is not a formu8la, it is the full development of faith. Luther never tried, nor did the early church fathers or the Apostles, try to "formulate" salvation. The Catholics tried that and have failed miserably; the sects - Calvinists, et. al. have done likewise.
God is the author of salvation, and any talk whatsoever of the "me" in the matter is heresy. That is where Cavness has tried to lead you, and which I must, as a matter of Christian faith, reject outright. I get where he is going - he is trying to turn salvation into a mathematical equation - which NO human being has God's permission so to do, but he is doing so anyway, and you are discussing that with him.
I understand you are relatively new to apologetics (although you do quite well, all in all), but understand that the greatest threat to the Christian faith is not the Catholics nor the Muslims nor even the Mormons and Jehovah's Witnesses - it is Calvin's damnable theology, which has led to every Christian heresy and false practice of the last 450 years.
Don't take my word, go study for yourself, as did I. The conclusion is inescapable. Cavness may be ignorant (he really does seems to be), but the facts are facts. Step outside the (small "c") catholic faith, and every heresy of today is but a repeat of the first 5 centuries after Christ, and the ones today descend directly from Jean Cauvin.
I have zero intention of trying to engage a middle ground with a Calvinist because there is no middle ground with a Calvinist (and Cavness has stated as much). There is their way of the highway. He doesn't want to discuss the Person of Christ nor the Sacrament of the Altar, he wants some silly agreement in his salvation "formula."
Waste of time. Time for you to see that, too.
Little of what he has to say has anything to do with Jesus IN REALITY. IT is about what Cavness thinks.
As I said earlier - get Lutheranism 101 from CPH and read especially Chapter 9 (Jesus) and Chapter 1(Law and Gospel). Cavness will quickly appear to you as shallow as he has been all along to me.
I am 40 years into this argument (probably way before your time). I have dealt with some really big (Calvinist) guns in the past. Calvin and his "reason-based" "almost theology" are not the Gospel, and I refuse to give an inch on that. It would be to deny Calvary.
That is, in the end, what Calvinism does. You nor Cavness may have made much of Genus Maiestaticum - but the Personal and Mystical Union of the God Man is the heart of the faith. Calvinism rejects the primary tenet, which is to deny that Christ is God in the flesh. They can say otherwise, but if they deny Christ's ubiquity (everywhere present) because they limit His Divine Nature in terms of His human nature (WHICH THEY DO), then they can spout off whatever formulas and doctrines and praises be to whomever . . .
They are rejecting the heart of the Incarnation. I won't go anywhere near such devilishness.
I pray you do not, either.