NXR Podcast - QUESTIONS - What Are Some Views Of Salvation Besides Calvinism and Arminianism?
Aired: 2022-08-20
Duration: 16:03


=== Five Star Review Request (02:42) ===

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[00:00:21]  Super chat from Jamie J. Jamie J. Is Calvinism and Arminianism the only two views?
[00:00:28]  And will you explain the differences of each?
[00:00:30]  Okay.
[00:00:31]  No.
[00:00:31]  All right.
[00:00:32]  So, in terms of views, views of what?
[00:00:33]  All right.
[00:00:34]  So, the headline for this, you got theology.
[00:00:36]  All right.
[00:00:36]  And then subcategories soteriology.
[00:00:39]  Soteriology is our doctrine of salvation.
[00:00:41]  How does God say what is salvation?
[00:00:43]  How does God apply salvation?
[00:00:45]  How does God not just apply salvation to the individual person that He's saving, but how did God accomplish salvation through the work of His Son Jesus, the person and work of Christ?
[00:00:55]  So, soteriology covers all of that.
[00:00:58]  What is salvation?
[00:00:59]  How does God accomplish salvation?
[00:01:01]  How does God apply salvation?
[00:01:02]  The doctrine of salvation.
[00:01:04]  Salvation is soteriology.
[00:01:05]  Within soteriology, there are multiple views.
[00:01:07]  Arminianism is one, Calvinism is one.
[00:01:10]  There is also the provisionism view.
[00:01:15]  Leighton Flowers talks about that all the time.
[00:01:18]  Leighton Flowers is very grateful for guys like me and guys like James White.
[00:01:23]  If it wasn't, he'd have nothing to talk about if it wasn't for Calvinists.
[00:01:26]  So he's a provisionist.
[00:01:28]  I don't have time to go into that.
[00:01:29]  You can check out my debate with Leighton.
[00:01:31]  It was actually my first time ever formally debating somewhere.
[00:01:35]  I would argue that in that debate, I would say that Layton did better than me, just for the record.
[00:01:40]  I think he did better than me.
[00:01:41]  So I'm not just, oh, I did great and Layton's twisting my words or Layton this.
[00:01:45]  I don't think that.
[00:01:46]  I like Layton.
[00:01:47]  I think he's a good guy.
[00:01:48]  I think he's dead wrong on these things.
[00:01:50]  And I do think that I would like to see him address some other things besides just so teriology.
[00:01:55]  But you're allowed to just have a YouTube channel that talks about one thing.
[00:01:59]  Layton's allowed to do that.
[00:02:00]  So, anyways, all that being said, he would be a provisionist.
[00:02:04]  If you want to know about provision, you can check out our debate.
[00:02:08]  And if you want to, the Colossians 2 thing is where in our cross examination, where I feel like he stumped me.
[00:02:14]  And I have an answer for that now.
[00:02:16]  I didn't at the time.
[00:02:17]  I was caught off guard and just wasn't prepared for that form of that portion of debate, cross examination.
[00:02:24]  I didn't have a lot of experience in that, hadn't done it before.
[00:02:27]  So I think he bested me on that point, Colossians chapter 2.
[00:02:30]  Other than that, though, I think you'll hear me in my opening statement and closing statement, and then Layton also in his opening and closing statement.
[00:02:37]  You'll hear, I think, generally a good definition of Calvinism.
[00:02:41]  And provisionism.

=== Arminian Window of Grace (03:42) ===

[00:02:42]  And provisionism, my whole point is to say that differs from Arminianism.
[00:02:46]  So now we have three views.
[00:02:47]  There's also Molinism, which deals with salvation, but also really deals with middle knowledge and what does it mean for God to be sovereign and what's the nature of God's sovereignty and these kinds of things.
[00:02:58]  But you could talk about that.
[00:03:00]  James White has a good debate on Molinism with William Ling Craig.
[00:03:05]  And I think James White mops the floor with William Ling Craig, but you can check that out.
[00:03:11]  But Arminianism and Calvinism seem to be the primary.
[00:03:15]  Views of soteriology.
[00:03:17]  Just for the record, in a nutshell, you can check out the debate with Leighton, but in a nutshell, the difference between provisionism and Arminianism is Arminianism has this clause that Jacobus Arminius kind of entered into the fray because he had to resolve some tension that he was creating by denying certain Calvinistic doctrines.
[00:03:39]  And so, what he did to resolve it is he created this extra category of what he called provenient grace.
[00:03:47]  Okay, and so provenient grace is a way that Jacobus Arminius and his followers, more particularly, were able to affirm what the Bible teaches about total depravity, that total depravity is total inability.
[00:04:00]  And this is where provisionism would disagree.
[00:04:02]  Leighton would disagree with that.
[00:04:04]  But the Arminian would say, no, Joel and the Calvinists, they're right about total depravity.
[00:04:08]  Total depravity, it means you cannot come to Christ, you're totally unable to come to Christ.
[00:04:16]  However, The Arminian would say, but however, what you're not considering is this window of grace, this momentary, temporary, partial, provenient grace.
[00:04:26]  And what that provenient grace does is that there are times under the unction of the Holy Spirit where He basically takes someone who is totally depraved, and total depravity is total inability.
[00:04:37]  This person can't come to Christ, but in provenient grace for a moment, the Holy Spirit temporarily suspends or lifts, it's temporary and it's partial, partially and temporarily suspends or lifts the person's.
[00:04:52]  Total depravity, total inability, and brings them, as it were, to kind of a state of spiritual neutrality, to where the person then is able to hear the preaching of the gospel from a neutral standpoint and able to make an objective and unbiased choice to either put faith in Christ,
[00:05:11]  and then the faith would result in regeneration, being born again, being born again would be the reward, if you will, for faith, or the person can choose to double down on their sin and harden their heart, reject the gospel, and then the prevenient grace, window of grace, would.
[00:05:25]  Would pass and they would harden back into their sin.
[00:05:29]  So that's Arminianism.
[00:05:30]  And so what I'm saying is Arminianism agrees with Calvinism in terms of total depravity, meaning total inability.
[00:05:37]  People can't come to God.
[00:05:38]  But the Arminian puts in this provenient grace clause, which is not biblical, but they do.
[00:05:44]  They put that in.
[00:05:46]  And that's how they get around the total depravity piece.
[00:05:48]  And then, of course, the Arminian has to, there's other, you know, it creates all these other holes in their theology.
[00:05:54]  Because my question to the Arminian would be does God give provenient grace to everyone, right?
[00:05:58]  Because you're also denying unconditional election.
[00:06:02]  And you say that the opportunity is there for everyone.
[00:06:06]  So God must be, at some point in someone's life, must be giving this provenient grace to everyone.
[00:06:10]  My next question is not just does He give, God give provenient grace to everyone so they have an opportunity to come to faith, but does God give the same measure, the same degree of provenient grace?
[00:06:19]  Right?
[00:06:19]  Because I could say, as a Calvinist, I'm looking at the Apostle Paul on the road to Damascus, his conversion.

=== Measure of Revelation and Grace (02:40) ===

[00:06:24]  And I would say, well, gee, I know a lot of people, a lot of people.
[00:06:29]  Who, if they were blinded from a light from heaven and knocked off of a horse and heard an audible voice from the clouds saying, So and so, so and so, why do you persecute me?
[00:06:40]  And they responded, saying, Who are you?
[00:06:43]  And then the voice again thundered and said, I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting.
[00:06:48]  I feel like I know a lot of people who are not Christians, but if they had that provenient grace, that measure, that degree, they would come to Christ.
[00:06:57]  And Jesus even says this.
[00:06:59]  Jesus says, He pronounces woes, judgment on certain.
[00:07:03]  Cities in Israel, and he compares them to Sodom and Gomorrah, and he says, It'll be more tolerable for Sodom and Gomorrah on judgment, with judgment, than it will be for these Israelite cities, because he says this For if the signs, if the measure of grace, the measure of revelation, if the signs and wonders, the miracles that I performed in you, you Jewish cities, had been performed in them, Sodom and Gomorrah, they would have repented long ago.
[00:07:31]  So what is Jesus saying?
[00:07:32]  He's saying, If they had been given more grace, they would have.
[00:07:37]  They would have been saved.
[00:07:38]  They would have repented.
[00:07:39]  So, why did they not repent?
[00:07:41]  Well, because of their sin, on the one hand, but on the other hand, because God knew that if He gave them more grace, they would repent, and God chose not to.
[00:07:49]  I mean, Isaiah prophesies this, and Jesus quotes Isaiah.
[00:07:52]  Remember when the disciples asked Isaiah, or they asked Jesus, they said, Why do you speak in parables?
[00:07:58]  And we always, pastors, always say, Well, Jesus used stories because it's a good analogy and illustration for the points.
[00:08:03]  That's not what Jesus says.
[00:08:04]  He doesn't say, I speak in parables to give a visual.
[00:08:08]  You know, I do it for the same reason that pastors show movie clips in their sermons and PowerPoints.
[00:08:14]  That's not what Jesus says.
[00:08:16]  He doesn't say parables help to illustrate my point.
[00:08:18]  No, he says, I use parables to fulfill the prophet Isaiah, who said, ever seeing but never perceiving, ever hearing but never listening, right?
[00:08:27]  That their eyes would be blinded, their ears would be deafened.
[00:08:30]  Isaiah prophesied of Christ saying that he's going to speak in such a way that people will be unclear.
[00:08:37]  So the parables are not meant to be helpful illustrations to make the point.
[00:08:41]  They're actually meant to be mysterious riddles intentionally for the point that.
[00:08:46]  So that many will miss Jesus' point.
[00:08:50]  And then Jesus, but to you, these things have been revealed.
[00:08:52]  And then he explains the parables to his disciples, right?
[00:08:56]  And so my point is even in that, you have this idea of there could be some measure of revelation, there's some measure of grace.
[00:09:04]  And that's what Romans 1 said.

=== Monergism vs Special Grace (06:57) ===

[00:09:05]  Everybody's received some measure of grace by simply living in God's world, right?
[00:09:10]  God has revealed his existence, certain attributes of God, his eternal power, his divine nature, by.
[00:09:17]  By creation itself, testifies to the existence of God by what He has made, so that all men are without an excuse.
[00:09:23]  So, all men have received some grace, and we would argue biblically that they've received enough grace through natural revelation to be not saved, but all men have received enough grace, enough revelation from God through creation itself to be justly condemned, to be without an excuse, for God to be just and justified when He judges sinful men.
[00:09:49]  But not all people receive enough special grace to be saved.
[00:09:54]  And then, what is that if not some kind of quasi election?
[00:09:58]  Think about that.
[00:09:59]  So, just think about it in terms of God's omniscience.
[00:10:03]  All right.
[00:10:03]  The omniscience of God, meaning he knows all things, he knows the end from the beginning.
[00:10:07]  All right.
[00:10:07]  So, if God knows all things, he's omniscient.
[00:10:09]  And let's add to that, if God is omnipotent, so not just he knows all things, but he can do all things, he's all powerful, all knowing, and all powerful.
[00:10:17]  If God is omniscient and omnipotent, He knows all things and can do all things.
[00:10:21]  Then that means for each individual person who's ever lived, God knows exactly what it would take to persuade them to salvation, for them to repent of their sins and put faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, just like the Apostle Paul on the way to Damascus.
[00:10:36]  So God knows all things.
[00:10:37]  He knows exactly what it would take for each individual to come to Christ.
[00:10:40]  And God can do all things.
[00:10:41]  He's omnipotent, not just omniscient, but omnipotent.
[00:10:44]  He can do all things, meaning God is fully capable of doing exactly what He knows is needed to bring them to Christ.
[00:10:53]  But he doesn't.
[00:10:55]  He doesn't.
[00:10:56]  Why?
[00:10:57]  I don't know.
[00:10:57]  I mean, the closest I can get to answering that question is Romans 9, right?
[00:11:02]  That why does God save people by his grace?
[00:11:05]  Well, Ephesians 1 to the praise of his glorious grace.
[00:11:07]  God predestines some and saves some, elects some to the praise of his glorious grace.
[00:11:12]  And I feel like on the flip side, what we'd have to say, kind of cross referencing, exegeting Ephesians 1 in light of Romans 9, is that God chooses not to save some to the praise of his glorious holiness.
[00:11:25]  God saves to the praise of his glorious grace, and he doesn't save to the praise of his glorious judgment, to the praise of his glorious justice.
[00:11:35]  I don't know.
[00:11:36]  He's God.
[00:11:36]  I mean, Romans 9, I think, covers it well.
[00:11:38]  The Apostle Paul says, Well, that doesn't seem fair.
[00:11:41]  And Paul says, But who are you, O man, to talk back to God?
[00:11:46]  Does the clay have the right to say to the potter, Why did you make me like this?
[00:11:49]  Does not the potter reserve the right to make out of the same lump of clay some for honorable use and some for common use?
[00:11:56]  Dishonorable is what the text actually says.
[00:11:59]  That's what the word means dishonorable use.
[00:12:02]  He's God.
[00:12:04]  I don't know.
[00:12:04]  He's God.
[00:12:06]  All I know is that he's good.
[00:12:08]  He is just, what he does is right, and he's also good.
[00:12:12]  And I don't always understand it, but that is the reformed view.
[00:12:15]  And my point is, in saying all that, my point is to say for the Arminian, some people get more provenient grace and some people get less provenient grace.
[00:12:23]  And there are verses that cover this.
[00:12:24]  And for the provisionist, like Leighton, he doesn't do the provenient gracing.
[00:12:29]  What he does is he just denies the doctrine of total depravity.
[00:12:32]  And so he'd say, well, I affirm total depravity, but I don't define it as total inability.
[00:12:37]  So even Jacobus Arminius would say to Leighton, that's no.
[00:12:43]  No.
[00:12:44]  Because Jacobus Arminius and Arminians, classic Arminians, affirm, they affirm total depravity as total inability.
[00:12:51]  And Leighton would basically say, well, people are sinners and everybody needs salvation, but people are not so far gone in their sin, in their sin nature, that they cannot hear the gospel and come to faith.
[00:13:02]  So people don't need to be brought to a state of neutrality from a state of hostility to God with this provenient grace clause.
[00:13:10]  No, people can kind of, you know, They're already kind of there, or they can get there, or the gospel will bring them there, but not the spirit.
[00:13:20]  And there's a distinction there because then it becomes kind of like this almost Catholic, Eastern Orthodox sacramental view of the gospel.
[00:13:27]  The gospel is the power of God for salvation, first for the Jew and then for the Greek.
[00:13:31]  But the gospel is not a sacrament.
[00:13:33]  The gospel does not infuse grace.
[00:13:37]  It's faith in the gospel by grace that imputes righteousness.
[00:13:41]  And so there's problems with that.
[00:13:43]  But the point is, provisionism, Arminianism, Calvinism, I went through all those links to let you know why that's where I am and that's why I hold to that.
[00:13:52]  And then you would have things like Pelagianism, right?
[00:13:55]  Which would be a heresy.
[00:13:58]  There are partial semi Pelagianists.
[00:14:02]  And with that, it's like basically, all right, so there's monergism.
[00:14:05]  That's the idea that God reaches down and saves man.
[00:14:07]  It's not teamwork makes the dream work.
[00:14:09]  It's just, it's a work of God, his unconditional election, his power to the glory of God alone.
[00:14:15]  Okay, that's monergism.
[00:14:16]  All right, then there's synergism.
[00:14:18]  And that would be semi Pelagianism.
[00:14:20]  That's where man reaches up and God reaches down.
[00:14:23]  Teamwork makes the dream work.
[00:14:24]  God's reaching down, he's reaching down to everyone.
[00:14:26]  The determinative factor in who gets saved and who doesn't is up to man.
[00:14:30]  Is he going to reach up to God or is he going to reject God's help, God's salvation?
[00:14:34]  Okay, that's synergism.
[00:14:36]  That would fall underneath the bounds of orthodoxy.
[00:14:39]  I think it's wrong, but it's not a heresy.
[00:14:41]  Okay, and that would be under this synergistic view of salvation, a semi Pelagianism.
[00:14:48]  Would be your provisionism, would be your Arminianism.
[00:14:53]  But then there's just straight up Pelagianism, no semi, but just pull it, and that's where man just reaches up to God and man is pretty much doing it all.
[00:15:03]  And that would be a heresy.
[00:15:04]  So, monergism, that's like Calvinism.
[00:15:07]  Semi Pelagianism, synergism, that's Arminianism, provisionism.
[00:15:12]  I think it's wrong, but it's not a heresy.
[00:15:15]  And then there's straight up Pelagianism where man does all the work and Therefore, logically, we can only assume that man deserves all the glory.
[00:15:23]  So, anyways, I hope that helps.
[00:15:25]  So, Arminianism and Calvinism, those are the two primary soteriological views, but there are others.
[00:15:31]  Provisionism would be one of them.
[00:15:34]  Pelagianism, although heresy would be one of them.
[00:15:38]  You can maybe argue Molinism, although that's not primarily talking about salvation, but it does address that.
[00:15:44]  So that's at least five views right there.
[00:15:46]  Thanks so much for listening.
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