Holy Joys Podcast
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Holy Joys Podcast
Prevenient Grace, Part 4: Pelagianism, Revival Theology, and Charles Finney
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In this episode, David Fry and Johnathan Arnold continue discussing Wesleyan Prevenient Grace in the thought of William Burt Pope. WPG is compared to the thought of John Cassian, Jonathan Edwards, Augustine, Pelagius, and Charles Finney.
Quotes from Fry:
- Arminians continue to be accused of being semi-Pelagian or perhaps even Pelagian for saying that we initiate our salvation.
- Our doctrine of grace has many implications for our pulpit ministry.
- The way we appeal to people to come to Christ matters. Those are delicate theological moments, and we need to make sure we are exalting grace in those moments instead of placing upon a person a burden that they can't carry.
- It very unfortunate that our revival theology has been shaped so much by Charles Finney who denied prevenient grace. Finney is not a friend to Wesleyans.
Quotes from Arnold:
- I hear things like "God is just waiting for you to take the first step towards you." God is not just waiting.
- Pope defines faith as a "divinely-wrought belief." Faith begins with the act of God upon the soul.
- We cannot schedule a "revival." "Revivals" are days when we pray for revival and humble ourselves to ask if God would graciously give us revival.
So I think what he's getting at here is, you know, we are human persons with intellect and affections, and our will, our faculty of choosing, follows our understanding and our affections.
SPEAKER_03What do we mean by bound? We at the very least, we mean that when something is bound, it loses capacity, right? It loses capability.
SPEAKER_00You're listening to the Holy Joys podcast, co-hosted by Jonathan Arnold and Dr. David Fry. Visit us at holyjoys.org and stay tuned for weekly discussions of theology and ministry practice, all for a holy, happy church.
SPEAKER_01I'm back with David Fry to continue discussing uh William Burt Pope's theology of prevenient grace. And where we left off last time was right before the section on uh human free will and then how God's grace relates to uh human free will. And in this section, uh, I think we we touch on really some really, really key points about the nature of man and how God's grace works with us. Um sometimes we treat uh provenient grace as this really just kind of mechanistic uh thing that God does, but Pope's really pushing us to think about um that God created us as human persons in his image, and he's working with us the way that we were made. Uh he's working on our affections, our intellect. And so I think this is a really, really helpful, uh important section um of a Pope's compendium.
SPEAKER_03Right. So we are in, for those who are following along, we are in the second volume of Pope and uh this uh section of Provenient Grace and in our volume, uh, where are we, page 363, I think. And there's a couple a couple of a couple of uh important uh subsections uh here that we uh want to work through. And um yeah, and you and you have mentioned in some of our discussions over the last couple of weeks, actually or a few weeks, uh I think you articulated a good understanding of how uh Pope uh relates the will to the inf affections and intellect. Uh so I that's probably a good place to start if you uh if you want to comment there on the that fourth paragraph, there actually on page 364. Would that be a good starting point, you think?
SPEAKER_01Sure, yeah. Give it a give it a whirl. So the what got me interested in in this is uh Pope makes the statement there, the will is not bound. And when we're talking about you know provenient grace, it's the answer to human depravity. And when we discuss human depravity, you know, we hear terms like total depravity. We as Wesleans affirm that every part of man is depraved. It's not that man is as bad as he could be. Um I think I mentioned before uh R. C. Sproul said something like, even Hitler probably had some affection for his mother, you know. Um it's not that man is bad as he could be, every part of man is is uh you know corrupted by sin. We talk about total inability, and we can affirm that as well, and we'll talk about that more. Another really key term related to total inability is the bondage of the will. And whenever you hear uh you know expositions of Wesley's doctrine of sin, you're gonna hear Wesley affirmed uh the bondage of the will very strongly, very clearly. And so when you hear Pope say the will is not bound, it's like, whoa, what is she getting out here? Yeah, it is.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, and and in our experience of hearing uh both lay, but even scholarly uh explanations of provenient grace. I've done some book reviews and have come across this where uh people will attempt a simple articulation of what provenient grace is and does. And one of the first things that is said is, well, it restores free will. And and so Pope here, when he says the will is not bound, uh that grabs our attention. So, yeah, in my book, uh, you know, well before um you and I started discussing this, I had two circles around that uh that phrase here. Uh, you know, emphasize, you know, like, okay, this needs some this needs some explanation. Wesley doesn't seem to say this, Fletcher doesn't seem to say it this way, uh, Watson doesn't seem to say it this way. Uh, okay, let's let's do some more explorate exploration and see what what Pope is meaning here.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, and you, you know, you you're thinking here, like, what is Pope diverging from Wesleyan theology? You know, because Pope is often said to be the most Wesleyan, you know, the most like Wesley of all the theologians. This is a key point for Wesley. And so I, you know, as I read this, I realize pretty quickly, if you really look at what Pope's saying here, he's not rejecting the doctrine of the bondage of the will at all. Um, what he's what he's getting at here is that our ability to choose, the faculty of choosing, um, is not ever lost. That's part of just simply what it means to be human. So he goes on to say, it is not needed. Grace is not needed to restore the faculty of will, its power of originating action. That has never been lost. So the idea is I can make choices all the time. I haven't lost the ability to make choices. And what Pope wants to do is say, when grace works, it's not restoring this faculty of choosing. It's not like there's chains around our will so that it can't act. And it's just kind of like we're bound here and we need to be our will needs to be loosed. The problem is that actually our human will, it follows our intellect and affections. And I think these are two key words.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, let me let me let me interrupt there and say, so the next thing that a person will say when they say, okay, but provenient grace restores will, and and sometimes people will catch themselves and say, Well, it it restores moral ability or it restores the ability to choose well or to choose rightly. Uh, so it restores something to the will. Now, what you're gonna say here in just a second, in your explanation of Pope, is uh, as I understand, is that even that explanation, and that may be right, that part of explanation may have some some credence to it, but that there's a different focus in with Pope, right? He's gonna refocus us from those sort of explanations, which he doesn't deny, but he's gonna refocus it. Is that accurate?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I think I think that's fair. So I think I think that's that's helpful. Um, and it gets a little tricky. You know, we talked a little bit before about um kind of the way that Edwards approaches this issue, but I think with Pope, what what again Pope is trying to emphasize here is is is how we were created as human persons. So um he starts out actually, if we back up for a second here and go back to the very beginning, you know, at the very beginning here on 363, this section on free will, he says, uh, as the object of God's grace, we are a personality free and responsible. And then he goes on to say in point one, provenient grace is exercised on the personality of man. Uh he goes on to say that the influence of the spirit directly or through the word is exercised upon the agent, whom Paul calls the active I or the passive me. So personality, the personality of man, the I or the me of the soul, as he says elsewhere. Uh and then in point three, the person is bound and enslaved to sin. So I think I think what he's getting at here is, you know, we are human persons with intellect and affections, and our will, our faculty of choosing, follows our understanding and our affections. And so the there's a sense in which the will is bound, but it's bound indirectly, if that's helpful. I don't know, the indirect bondage of the will through uh the corruption of our intellect and affections. So man never would or could choose Christ in his own power. He could because his intellect and affections are so corrupted that he would never exercise his will in that way. He just wouldn't do it. He's impotent, uh, Pope says. I mean, Pope makes some really strong statements about man's total impotence, or we might say inability. He he's he's really uh right there with Wesley, you know, in this understanding. But he's saying the spirit, when the spirit of God works upon us, he's enlightening the intellect, he is awakening in us, arousing in us through the the um, I'm trying to think, I think there's a there's a phrase somewhere Clark uses like the uh the motions of his heavenly grace, the strong and sweet, yet resistible motions of his heavenly grace. That's it. I just love that. Um he's awakening in us affections that we would never have on our own. He's awakening our mind. And I love this emphasis on the intellect because we're created as rational creatures. And so when the spirit of the Lagos comes, he is awakening our intellect and understanding. He's he's restoring to us some of our rationality so that we can um perceive the truth, we can have the right affections and respond positively. And then I'll quickly just end with this. He breaks affections here, I think, into two kind of categories of affection. So there's the intellect and affections, and then he breaks the affections into affections of hope and affections of fear. And I love this because affections of fear is like this deep conviction of sin, fear of God, and desire to flee from the wrath to come. And then affections of hope is this sense of Christ is the answer and he is the one, and salvation is in him, and awakens a love and a desire to find salvation in him. Uh, and then the intellect is awakened to understand these great truths. That's that's my understanding of Pope right now. And I I'm not saying that's you know bulletproof, but that's where I'm at. Yeah.
SPEAKER_03That's good. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Because you I think that's the first time I've heard you talk about or mention that uh the affections of fear and the affections of hope. Yeah, I think that's helpful. Now, let me go back to this statement again. The will is not bound. So I so let's let's articulate what bound means. What's it mean for Pope? What's he mean that the will is not bound? So for something to be bound uh in bondage, you know, Luther famously wrote, you know, the the bondage of the will and and Edwards, you know, bondage of the will, and and um you know Wesley uses the phrase bondage of the will. That's a pretty pretty common uh phraseology in Reformed and Wesleyan theology. Well, what do we mean by bound? We at the very least we mean that when something is bound, it it loses capacity, right? It loses cap capability, I should say. It loses capability. Um and so when he says the will is not bound, uh he is he is relocating um I that's that may be too strong. He is um he is broadening, I guess, broadening the enslavement. So go up to three, paragraph three. He says that person is bound and enslaved to sin. So the person is bound. It's not the will, but it's the person. So so if we read this statement, the will is bound, we might say, okay, all right, let's figure out why he's not Pelagian, right? Why he's not Pelagian. But we realize he's not he's not backing off of bondage. He is he's moving to a higher plane, so to speak. He's he's he's moving back from you know the tree to look at the forest, uh, or from a particular aspect of human psychology to the human himself, and saying that persons are bound, not aspects of per persons. Um obviously aspects of persons are are part of what it means to be a person, but um so so he's he is he is rephrasing, I think, a redirecting, he is redirecting us not to a different truth, but to to a different way of looking at it, right?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, because in point three there, he doubles down on depravity, and it's kind of funny the way he puts it, you know, Pope has a great way of putting things, but he kind of basically says, like, look, it's so obvious that, quote, human nature is bound to what is wrong, so bound that none can escape without a direct divine intervention. And right before that, he says, You don't even need the New Testament to figure that out, you know, like this is so obvious, right? He what he's saying is, okay, how does God take us from being, you know, needing this direct divine intervention? How does God do this? And that's the question that Pope's trying to answer. And he's saying when he does it, it's not this mechanistic thing where like we're bound, incapable of making these making decisions at all. It's that um rather our intellect and affections are so corrupted. And and he actually uses that uh again here. I'm sure I just found another place where he uses those same two um terms. Yeah, I lost it now. Uh it is not oh here, this is helpful. It is not so much a fetter on the will itself. I think that's where I picked up like that the chain idea of change. It's not like the will, it's not like the will is this thing in man that has chains around it. Rather, it is the ascendancy or the rule of a sinful bias over the motives that actuate the conduct by governing the will, the feelings and desires of the affection and the thoughts of the mind. So the will is almost like, I don't know if this is overstated, but the will is almost like the slave of the mind and the affections. I mean, just think about it. When we make choices, you know, we make choices based on what we know, our intellect, and our affections. And sometimes our affections can be so strong that they overrule our rational, you know, our better rational nature. Um, but sometimes our intellect can guide us to make rational choices uh when our affections maybe are out of line. Uh he's saying, look, the fall was so bad that your intellect and affections are totally out of whack. And you're you're never gonna exercise your will. It's just in the right way. You're never gonna choose Christ unless God works on your you as a rational being with with infections.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, so I as you're saying that, I'm I'm hearing the voices of all my Edward Edwardian friends, you know, who are saying, see, we've been telling you this for a long time. Um so I want to point out here that if any of you out there have read you know Jonathan Edwards, um his his work on affections, his his book Freedom of the Will, um you know, this is a big deal to Edwards, but I want to point out that um that that's not the point where we you know diverge from Edwards. Uh that the the the relationship of the affections and the intellect and the will, uh it is complicated. And and quite honestly, my so my criticism with Edwards on freedom of the will is that he gets into areas of human psychology that he's not really qualified to get into. Uh, nonetheless, I think he he his his um more than his his uh mental understanding, his intellectual understanding, I think his gut is that there's a bigger connection, as what you have articulated here. There's a bigger connection between the will and the desire, the the affections and and the mind than what um in his case Arminians have have affirmed. And I think he's right, because those are all very complex, uh even more complex than what Edwards or Wesley or even Pope understand or understood then. These are complicated uh aspects of human psychology.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, they they are, and yet what is so helpful about it, even if we don't maybe have it uh framed just perfectly, I think the really helpful thing, the takeaway, is that when we we talk about the way that God grace God's grace works upon us, it it really we need to have some kind of holistic approach to this uh that that takes into account all that God created us to be uh as human persons and and working on us as individuals in his image, um, with rationality being really key there, and then religious affections being really key for Edwards, but also especially Wesley, that pietistic vein, you know, is coming through here. Like um God's intention is to restore to us fully um you know, God-honoring religious affections. And so is it any surprise that when those first motions of heavenly grace come, they're acting upon us um in this area of our of our affections and our intellect.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, yeah. So let's let's point people to why does this matter? What is the you know where do we go? And um where do we go for this? So for for me, this comes down to this discussion of the will and affections, you know, is the will bound, is the will not bound? How do we understand uh the relationship of of our freedom, our ability to choose to faith, to saving faith? And so um I had mentioned to you uh Cassian, John Cassian, which you went and read, uh right, the 13th conference. So uh let's maybe maybe we can turn a little bit to to uh to him in just a second, but uh to give it a little bit of introduction. Um the reason I mention Cassian is because I think this discussion of provenient grace and how it relates to the will comes down to uh in my mind comes comes down to what the Latin fathers called the initium fidei. I think I may have thrown that out there before. The the beginning of faith. Uh where is the beginning of faith? Uh who is the beginner of faith? So our Arminians, you know, we have been continue to be accused of of being semi-Pelagian, or perhaps even uh straight out Pelagian, for saying that we initiate our salvation. Yeah. And if you're oh go ahead.
SPEAKER_01No, no, go ahead. Go ahead. Well, I was just gonna say, if you interact with the best of Wesleyan Arminian thought, you're not gonna, you're not gonna find that that accusation lands very well. But I must say, uh, the more I reflect on this and the more personal experiences I have, the more I think sometimes we deserve it. And frankly, sometimes Calvinists deserve some of the mischaracterizations that they get, because uh sometimes this trickles down in a poor way in the pew, especially if you have pastors that aren't as theologically sound as maybe they ought to be. And certainly I have a long way to go. But you know, I hear things like uh God is waiting for you to take the first step towards him. He and if you take the first step, right, uh he'll come running towards you. And you know, I think that that picture comes from the prodigal son. And that you know, I hear people say God is just waiting, you know, and that's that that father who's waiting for his son to come home. But what I love to point out is in the very next parable, the sheep is so stupid that the shepherd has to go get him. So, so are you really gonna take this one parable and and hang your soteriology on it? So the the problem is that when you just when you just you know constantly you're you're reinforcing this idea that God's kind of just hanging out, waiting for you to make that step towards him. And sometimes, I'll be honest, kind of on a side note, it almost makes God seem kind of pitiful and sad, like God's just kind of waiting, hoping that you'll come to him. Well, actually, no, God's spirit, if we're gonna push the parable further, God's spirit was with him in the pig pen, and the spirit was the one that brought him to his senses, and the spirit was the one that drag, you know, basically, you know, pushed him all the way home. He could have resisted, but without the spirit enabling him to make that step. So, you know, Pope, and I wish I had it in front of me, but there's a place where Pope is like really clear. Maybe it's in the next section on how faith is the gift of God. I mean, faith, it's like the first thing he says about it. Um, do you have that handy? You know what I'm referring to.
SPEAKER_03That's uh I think that's the next section where he talks about conversion, right? Or it's a perfect.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I'm not sure here. Anyway, he basically says it's the gift of God. I mean, repentance is the gift of God, faith is the gift of God. Oh, here we go. Faith as the instrument of appropriating salvation, which is a fancy way of saying uh, you know, God has accomplished something in Christ, and now you've got to appropriate that, take advantage of it. It needs to be applied to you. And faith is sometimes called the instrumental cause. It's like an instrument, like tongs that this is kind of a rough illustration, but like tongs, tongs that grab hold of something. So it's like faith is that thing that lays hold of salvation, the instrument of appropriating salvation. And this is studying. says it is. This is how Pope, this is where Pope starts. It is a divinely wrought belief. Divinely wrought belief. That's how he defines faith. So I think Pope is pretty clear faith begins with the act of God upon the soul.
SPEAKER_03Yes. Yeah. So there are certainly implications here for our pulpit ministry. And so again, I think we'll have some some uh pastors who listen to this, we'll have you know perhaps some evangelists or people who have a pulpit ministry. And so you know keep listening. We want to bring it back around to that because our language matters, right? The the way we appeal to people to to come to Christ uh is a um those those are delicate theological moments and we want to make sure that we are um that we are uh exalting grace in those moments and uh instead instead of uh placing upon a you know a seeker placing upon a person um a burden that they can't carry a responsibility that is not theirs to to have so so that's why I bring uh um you know Cassian and and Augustine uh because this these are discussions that go way back uh to to the fifth century so um Augustine um who uh especially addressed this in his later life he died in 430 uh I'm not sure when Cassian died he was born in 360 but uh they're they're contemporaries 435 maybe yeah it was after Augustine I know he outlived Augustine by at least a few years um and Wikipedia is saying 435 so okay all right there you go must be all right all right check to see who who put that in there um so but they talk about this uh a couple of of important concepts uh one is this beginning of faith the initium fidei uh the the beginning of faith and then the other is the relation of grace and human nature which Pope talks about too right and um and and so the the whole Augustine you know uh uh Augustine Pelagius controversy really centered around um what what grace uh what does grace do in our life uh so that we may be saved and for for Pelagius he he believed that the grace of creation the grace given to us at our creation uh including you know freedom of the will and uh desires affections intellect all of that that it it maintained ability through the fall so that we could turn to God of our own effort out of our own nature and therefore and he would he used he used the phrase by pervenient merit then God gives us the grace of salvation and and he and actually Augustine used I'm sorry Pelagius used the phrase provenient merit before Augustine responded with no it's not provenient merit it's provenient grace and that's where the term comes from and and so uh Augustine goes to great lengths in that that Pelagian controversy but then later in his life so-called semi-Pelagian controversy began because and I I love this history because it's just interesting it continues to the same questions are asked today uh and so pastors listen because these are important questions so one of them is why pray Augustine if God determines everything in a in a um monergistic way that he imposes or he refrains from imposing his will on people so that it's always has God's desired effect then why pray for people? That was one question that was asked of him by this gathering of monks in um uh in Egypt and so they wrote him a letter first of all saying why should we pray then and then they wrote another letter saying why should we rebuke a brother who has sinned uh if God is going to do what he wants whether or not we intervene why why pray why rebuke and so um that kind of started this uh this what we call the late Augustinian view of grace and free will which he became quite radical and um and so where John Cassian comes in is through actually uh a student of Augustine Prosper a layman uh in um southern Gaul so you know across the the Mediterranean Sea and what now is southern France uh Marseille Lorraine that area uh Prosper was engaging with some uh maybe maybe Cassian himself uh we're not sure exactly who all he was engaging with but people who were at least influenced by Cassian and some others uh who were disagreeing with Augustine and so um they uh they were disagreeing with Augustine's explanation of prayer and rebuke and so forth so Cassian writes uh we don't know exactly when he wrote the 13th conference but he writes this and then it becomes a classic text for what we today call semi-pelagianism um because he he uh kind of he wavers between the grace uh given to mankind at creation uh we call that the you know uh gratia creata the grace of creation and the um you know the optimism uh kind of a Pelagian moralistic uh optimism and and then he'll he'll waver between that and then he'll go back to but you know only God can do this so it's so it's it's he very much I mean he's hard to pin down and so he's become the classic semi plagiar.
SPEAKER_01Yeah that's that wait word waver you know as I'm reading this thing I mean I I just thought of Ephesians for toss to and fro. It's like this guy is all over the place. But then he'll make a statement like so he he really a lot of it is him him expounding scripture whether or not he does it well um and and it seems like you know his conclusion is kind of something like well God's grace doesn't always work the same way. So it's like sometimes he makes statements that seem to exclude um you know man making the first move in salvation. But then he see he feels very comfortable it seems uh and I'm no expert on casting but it seems like he's you know holding this together he's not he doesn't feel the tension of holding that together with making statements uh in chapter nine like here's an example where he says um he says you know there's there's clearly the grace of God at work, there's the freedom of the will you got to hold these things together somehow. And then he refers to through the excellence of nature which is granted by the goodness of the creator, sometimes first beginnings of a good will arise, which however cannot attain to the complete performance of what is good unless it is guided by the Lord. And so it seems like there he's he's saying the grace of creation is enough that sometimes men do make the first good movement towards God, which Wesleyan's uh repeatedly reject that idea and say the very first movement that man makes is is up fully of grace, not of his own goodwill, the the grace of creation is insufficient. And I do want to talk here at some point a little bit more about this idea. And if somebody is just tuning into this podcast, listening to one of the previous ones will be really helpful because we do go into that that distinction more grace of creation versus grace of Christ. And we had talked a little bit off air about um I'm I'm not crazy over those terms. I think the thing the tension I feel between those terms is that by by contrasting the grace of creation to the grace of Christ, it seems to indicate that the grace of creation is not the grace of Christ. And I think the point here is you know what grace was given to us when we were created versus what grace is available to us because of the incarnate ministry of Christ.
SPEAKER_03Yeah so I use the phrase yeah right so I used the phrase intervening grace I think in our in our discussion if I didn't if I didn't use that if I didn't use that in the last podcast um that that's what we mean I think we we discussed that and that's probably a better a better phrase that that's not what you know Augustine or Cassian use but I think intervening grace that uh was necessary due to you know the fall of man.
SPEAKER_01Yeah I love that go ahead let's let's tie this in so uh I have uh there you mentioned chapter nine of Cassian's 13th conference yeah um let's compare that then and and your thoughts with this phrase from Pope uh I'm on page 365 so it's the next subsection that relates grace to the freedom of the will and at the bottom of that so this is uh paragraph number two um and the the last sentence there he says but it must always be remembered that this hearer of the word has a preliminary grace in the roots of his nature which he yields to or resists in the very act of resisting or yielding to the appeal of heaven so there are a few times throughout here where he acknowledges uh what uh what's he he calls it preliminary grace Cassian now or are you still talking about okay yeah yes where he where he'll use you know phrases that that refer to what Cassian may call the the grace of creation um preliminary grace in the roots of his nature um interesting so you're reading that as indicating grace of creation that remains in the roots of man's nature is that the idea right right yeah so I'm wondering you know you know what he has in mind here so but this it's a reminder here I think it's important that we and I think this is I think Pope makes this point that um we don't deny the grace of nature and I think that's it's out of that framework that he can say you know the will's not bound but that doesn't mean we deny total uh what we call total inability or total depravity and the total inability that that accompanies that it's it is uh so he's acknowledging grace that that works through the nature of man is given in the the very being that we are that enables us uh to yield or to resist um and so I think we have to ask ourselves then okay um how then or where then is the beginning of faith where then is the beginning of faith and I don't I don't think he leaves any question uh to uh the fact that the beginning of faith is uh through the Holy Spirit it's at what what point is that is the Holy Spirit you know beginning giving that as a gift right yeah interesting so I really think we have to have um I really have to work out what exactly we we what what is entailed by the grace of creation uh and one and I really I just really want to press this because I I think that there are a lot of people who think about um who think about uh man and his salvation in a really kind of uh strict kind of sequential order like God created us good we hear this all you know this kind of simple uh recounting of events God created man good man sinned God sent Christ to save us and it seems like Christ comes in later and we really think about Jesus as a New Testament figure but when we if we think about it in terms that Christ is our creator and we were created in the image of God Christ is the image of God um he's the he's and in fact uh and I think this is really an Eastern Orthodox uh want to want to push this idea and I think we can we can affirm something here that we were created in the image of the incarnate Christ that was yet to come temporally um so we are we the grace of creation is really the grace of Christ so when we when we talk about um the the preliminary grace in the roots of his nature we have to understand that that this image uh that's being restored by provenient grace and then sanctifying grace regenerating grace is the same image uh from the beginning so the question is how much if any of that remains that that uh image that capacity and I think Pope wants to say it's pretty severely if not totally damaged um man we don't become less than human but that that this has to restore something of that same um that same image that was there from the beginning okay all right so so okay so I think this is I think this is a really profound uh point you're touching on because it is because of Christ's intervention in the human race that what it means to for us to be human must be seen through the light of Christ right yeah must be seen and understood through the light of Christ's um humanity and not primarily through Adam's humanity uh post fall uh his his fallen humanity so I think that's a really important point uh and distinction as I've made it before a distinction between our Calvinist and uh Western Arminian theology is that um it seems to me that Calvinist theology systemic theology is really um first atom centric whereas western Armenian theology is is Christocentric we focus we focus on what the second atom has done has affected for the human race so yeah as you're talking there I'm thinking you know what this uh christ changes everything right he changes everything and so even he even changes so when we talk about the grace of of creation the grace of human uh you know uh uh built into what it means to be human we we have to understand that in light of Christ not in light of Adam that's right yeah that's the key point and I I'm I'm still working this out so I don't know how well I'm really articulating it but I think that's that's a key point. And so um we yeah the the grace that's coming to us is the same grace that was given to us in the beginning. And I think this comes back to that first discussion we had where we really ended up just getting into recapitulation and uh you know what Christ accomplishes in his reheading of the race and how how that grace then flows to us. So yeah yeah sometimes I you know and this is this is a question maybe for you too like when we talk about union with Christ sometimes it seems like you know what Christ has accomplished is is fully out there and then that grace flows to us once we're in union with him but actually because there's something uh that's happened to our shared humanity in being united to the divinity of Christ that grace is already beginning to flow through the Holy Spirit. Right right right yes exactly exactly so that um yeah oh wow there's so many places we can go from there but um let let's let's bring this then back to pulpit ministry can we do that let's let's let's talk then about how does that impact our appeal to people and not just from the pulpit but in our in our pastoral ministry uh what's this mean yeah how what does our understanding of the um the beginning of faith the initium fidei uh how does it impact our appeal to to people who sit under our ministry our pulpit ministry uh it has has um do you have any thoughts on how that has shaped your your preaching yeah i it it's interesting uh a couple places i'd like to go with that let me ask you this first quick uh related question so john if i understand it correctly john wesley did not believe that a person could come to salvation at any time that he pleased so he did not believe that that provenient grace was of such a nature that you were restored the faculty of choosing or the uh ability or the knowledge or the affections or anything like that that you could now at any time wake up one morning and say, you know, today I'm gonna come to Jesus. It doesn't work like that. You need the direct grace of God working upon you in a moment of time. And so Wesley talks about how if you if God's working in your soul and you have this kind of like desire for salvation, um, you can't necessarily just get up and go get saved. The grace of God has to be available to you in that moment. So he says like attend to the means of grace you know go to go to church and take you know if if the Lord's supper is available which that's a kind of debate for another time but whatever do all this avail yourself to the means of grace and the grace of God will become available to you in his time when he's ready to give it to you.
SPEAKER_03Is that so are you saying let me ask you this so let's just push on that are you saying that a pastor should not give a general appeal and and say we don't know when that grace is available. So so it's so well so you could you can move that and you can say well you don't know to whom to whom that grace is available right you uh you don't know who the elect are in your congregation.
SPEAKER_01No so so how how do we reconcile that because we do we do I I do I do believe that I can appeal to all people because I believe that it is uh in part at least through the grace of preaching yes yeah through the grace of prayer or you mentioned you know the Lord's Lord's Supper that it is through that that God um gives opportunity that the spirit uh convicts a heart moves upon a heart so so I yeah is is that yeah that's what we mean by means of grace you know they're like those channels like if you think of chutes of water they're like those chutes through which the grace you know of God flows to a person and so certainly yeah we want to make that available to people but it's not uh for it doesn't seem like for Wesley it's this really mechanistic thing and I keep coming back to that word because it's not like this thing where like you know you can just anytime if you just do the right things then you can make the grace of God available as if it's some commodity that you control and you can just go make it available to person and they can in that moment get saved. Well actually no God is free and and the freedom the free grace uh of God in a different sense it's a grace that he gives freely of his own will um that that grace is not always available in a way that this is Wesley's view as I understand it.
SPEAKER_03I'm I'm not saying I'm you know I'm ready to die on this I'm thinking of all the all of the emails and the uh messages that you're gonna be getting hey hey send them to Wesley I'm just telling you what I this I'm pretty sure I'm I'm I'm representing him well I wish I had the references up here I could read it from no well for sure yeah you're you're you are um uh you've had Chris Bound's I think did you take um uh no okay all right so so those of you who have sat in Chris Bound's um his articulation of of Wesley's relation to Augustine in particular that's that's his um and I think correct um summary of of Wesley so he would say uh as you have uh that you know Wesley's view is that that um a person can't be saved at any moment of their own choosing uh because that locates the beginning of faith in their own choice not in God's grace. And so he understands Ephesians, Ephesians 2, you know, that the gift, the gift of God is includes faith.
SPEAKER_01Yes, Pope. And Pope says that very clearly. You know, he doesn't want to limit that to uh anyone, he says it it encompasses everything there. The the whole the gift includes the faith, it includes the salvation. Yeah, yeah. Key point.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, but but we've kind of lost that in American preaching. And I'm not even gonna say, you know, Wesleyan. I'm gonna say, you know, in the history of you know American uh revivalism, maybe, or certainly it's certainly more than a century old, uh, but the spirit of American preaching has very much appealed to this is your choice, and you know, you as an individual have the ability, the right, the responsibility to respond right now. Uh, we're that's very much how our preaching, American preaching, has been uh formed, right? We we preach to a decision, we we preach to a to a crisis. And and and I'm not saying that that's wrong. So I send all your uh emails to to Jonathan, not to me.
SPEAKER_01Um I might I might I might be willing to say that it that it's dangerous, it's dangerous if our preaching is driven that way. I mean it's it's concerning. Yeah.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, yeah. So the concern, the concern with that is uh quite frankly, collegianism, right? I mean that is that is the concern. And and so the whole reason we're having this discussion and going through Pope is because I think you and I both discern that uh we really haven't we we've stopped bothering with this idea of provenient grace and the fact that uh faith, the beginning of faith is a gift from God.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, it's a really big deal. So yeah, so let's go back to this idea. Let's let's assume that Wesley's right on this point. Um, how does this affect our pulpit ministry? You that's that's kind of where you started with with uh with this discussion. So um I think that a much more systematic exposition of the word, a consistent, faithful exposition, with the confidence that God's will work through his word in his time as we faithfully provide this grace, um, rather than an approach that says I have to have everything aligning properly in my sermon um and in the atmosphere and in the setting to move people to the altar. And that lends itself to great manipulation. And this is where, and this is where I might get some emails. Okay. I I when I read Charles Finney's lectures on revival, frankly, I want to jump out of window. The guy says things that make me unbelievably nervous from a theological perspective. And Roger Olson says he's not an Arminian. And I have to say I have to agree. You know, he talks about how you can have a revival anytime you want. He, his first lecture, he wants to make the point revival is not a miracle, not pneumatological, not something that the spirit freely pours out upon the church, but it's something you can schedule and you can bring about. Yeah. And he even says it helps if the weather is the is right. So if you have the right song and the right song evangelist and the right evangelist who's charismatic enough and you know, jumps up on the piano and the weather is good that day, you can have a revival. And I'm like, that's crazy. That is collagen.
SPEAKER_03Okay, so I gotta I gotta tell you a story. So uh 20 years, no, no, no, not that long ago. 15 years ago. Yeah, because I was a I was in seminary. Uh, 15 years ago, I was asked uh to speak at our ministerial. Uh several of us were asked to give different different papers, and I was asked to speak on the quote biblical doctrine of revival. All right. So I said, okay. So I uh tackled that and came and and actually out of that, I I don't know, I I may have 20,000, 25,000 words written now. I hope to write a book perhaps on theology or revival, but came to four distinct, uh certainly three, but possibly four very distinct movements of revival theology. Now that's we I'll go into that in a different podcast. But this is that is to say that um Edwards' theology can be summed up simply. That is God gives revival, period. Finny is we make revival happen. And it all hinges on our understanding of this issue of of divine grace and the initiation of grace. And um I think it is very unfortunate that our revival theology has been shaped so much by Finney, who was not a who denied provenient grace. All right. I mean, he pretty much just flat out rejected uh the the idea of uh of a Wesleyan understanding of provenient grace. Um he's not a friend to Westlands out there. Anyway, I so I presented that and and had needless to say had some very lively discussion afterwards, and all my friends, pastors in in the Alabama Conference, or what's now the Southern Conference, uh will remember that if you've been around for 15 years or longer. Um and still to this day, sometimes I'll get uh comments and you know, if someone says something about you know revival, they'll look at me as if I'm the anti-revivalist. Uh I'm not. I'm not. I'm the I'm the anti-finite. Uh I am I am more actually with Edwards on this, maybe the one thing I'm with Edwards on. Um when it comes to that.
SPEAKER_01But that yeah, that's a that's actually a great application. Yeah, I'm glad you, I'm glad you said that. I I I feel like I'm alone in this, but I heard one time um somebody who was poking at the the revival tradition, and I gotta say, like, there's something to it. You know, he said, I I kind of grew up around this this thing where you'd you'd have a revival every spring and fall. And he'd say, Well, how do you know you're gonna have revival? How can you schedule it? Jane, you know, March 5th, the 10th, we're gonna have revival. And so I what I tell people at our church is these are days that we are going to pray for revival and humble ourselves if God would graciously give us revival. We're not having an actual revival, right? We're we're having a time to pray for and seek revival. And when I put it that way, people who may not agree with me or maybe maybe maybe a fan of Finney, they they kind of they understand that actually, I think. So I don't want to be too hard on the tradition, but I have to say, yeah, it makes me really, really nervous where it just feels like we're we're manipulating this thing, we're in control of this thing. Historical revivals have typically been a surprise. And the ones that haven't been and seem to be manufactured in the Finny tradition, often the history isn't necessarily on their side. They're the the the long-term results are very debatable. What actually what good actually came out of this?
SPEAKER_03Yeah, so we we need to come back and and have an hour just on that. Uh for sure, for sure. That's one one very much so. But okay, so let me give in another application. And we've touched on this already. But I believe that when we when we uh correct our thinking and understand as Wesley did, that uh uh Ephesians 2 uh is saying that uh faith, salvation, you know, the whole package is a gift of God, not of our own works. That that will also uh broaden our use and appreciation for the sacraments, right? For initiation through baptism and through the use of the Lord's Supper, and even um you know, other means of grace such as fasting, uh certainly prayer, you just mentioned that in uh conjunction with revival. Um just uh even even the way we um conduct our our times of worship, corporate worship, I I really think that um that it will if we see our corporate worship especially as you know, we're setting the table as a means of grace, uh through which uh through which God, by the way, has promised to be present, right? God has promised to be present in that gathering and to and to speak and to work and to show. And so I think we can with a uh with a high amount of confidence, um, with well, we can with certainty we can be assured that God is present and that he is moving upon hearts of those who are receptive. Now we all know that people come into a worship service hard-hearted, they may sing the songs, they may go through the motions, and they're not hearing a thing, right? Um we we we know that, but wow, what a uh what an um opportunity for us to gain a greater appreciation for the means of grace uh through the lens of saying, you know, grace is is um grace is not automatic just because I showed up. Yeah, but these are invitations, these are movements of God toward us in which he invites us to receive to receive grace.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. You know, I think of like Wesley's sermon on the duty of constant communion. And we're, you know, right now in in uh Protestantism for a while, evangelicals especially, um, especially low church evangelicals, we're debating whether or not we should have the supper, you know, once a year or once a quarter, or maybe once a month, or, you know, God forbid. Um, but Wesley is like, you know, yeah, until everybody got hard-hearted and lost their first love, they took it like two to three times a week. So why, why was Wesley just so strong on you've got to have communion as often as you can take it? And if you don't, you're forsaking a basic Christian duty. Well, I think it's because of this very point. He understands how vital it is that these means of grace are constantly put before people because you don't know when God is going to move upon the heart of a person and draw and bring them to faith.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, right, right, right. Yeah. So and what kind of security is there for a person who who for whom everything hinges on our own choice? You know, I I mean it's just because if you begin that way, I mean you're just you're setting yourself up, right, for inevitable failure when you either just feel differently than you did, or or if you choose differently than you did, suddenly not only does the beginning of your faith you know rest on the you know, way down on the fact of your choice, but your your whole life of faith then rests on that. And it's it becomes as whimsical as your feelings and your affections and your mental processes and ultimately your will.
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