The Error of "Exalting Human Ability" -- Rejection of Errors, First Head of Doctrine, Canons of Dort (Four)

Having set forth the orthodox teaching concerning election and reprobation, the Synod rejects the errors of those . . .

IV. Who teach that in election to faith a prerequisite condition is that man should rightly use the light of nature, be upright, unassuming, humble, and disposed to eternal life, as though election depended to some extent on these factors.

For this smacks of Pelagius, and it clearly calls into question the words of the apostle: “We lived at one time in the passions of our flesh, following the will of our flesh and thoughts, and we were by nature children of wrath, like everyone else. But God, who is rich in mercy, out of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in transgressions, made us alive with Christ, by whose grace you have been saved. And God raised us up with him and seated us with him in heaven in Christ Jesus, in order that in the coming ages we might show the surpassing riches of his grace, according to his kindness toward us in Christ Jesus. For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith (and this not from yourselves; it is the gift of God) not by works, so that no one can boast” (Eph. 2:3–9).

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The fourth error rejected by the authors of the Canons is still quite popular today. This is the idea that God elects those who through natural ability and spiritual insight, place themselves in a position to receive grace from God. In other words, they are able to prepare themselves to receive and act upon God’s grace. At its heart, this is the ancient heresy of Pelagianism, which holds that even after the fall of our race into sin, humans retain the ability to save themselves. This amounts to an outright denial of sola gratia (grace alone). It also denies the biblical teaching about election as set forth in articles one through nineteen of the first head of doctrine in the Canons.

In the Pelagian scheme, grace is understood to be the communication of right information about what God requires of us, so that the creature (who retains sufficient natural ability) can do what is necessary to be saved. The Pelagian road is built upon human ability, and inevitably leads to the dead-end of works-righteousness.

Unfortunately, this very flawed idea is very common in much of American Evangelicalism. In large measure, it was bequeathed to us by Charles Grandison Finney (1792-1875), who wrote in his Systematic Theology, “Regeneration consists in the sinner changing his ultimate choice, intention, preference; or in changing from selfishness to love and benevolence; or, in other words, in turning from the supreme choice of self-gratification, to the supreme love of God and the equal love of his neighbor. Of course the subject of regeneration must be an agent in the work” (Systematic Theology, 224).

This is an amazing admission, If we jiggle the lever in the right way, and use the right means, we don’t even need the grace of God to be saved. According to Finney, even after the fall, humanity still possesses sufficient natural ability to do what God requires of us. We must be agents and subjects in this work.

The logical consequence of this is that our salvation does not at all depend upon God. Rather, it depends upon us. As the Princeton theologian B. B. Warfield once remarked in response to Finney, this is not theology at all, this is ethics. As Warfield put it, “we said that God might be eliminated entirely from Finney’s ethical theory without injury to it: are we not prepared to now say that [God] might be eliminated from it with some advantage to it.” Sad, but true.

The denial that our salvation begins in God with his gracious decree of election leads to a host of errors and skewed practices. Finney is the father of American revivalism, characterized by the frontier tent-meeting and the sawdust trail. Finney’s revivalist legacy is most clearly seen today in the countless stadiums filled with people being urged to “let God” do this, that, or the other. Finney is also the father of the altar call and the “evangelistic meeting” which takes place apart from the ordinary preaching and sacramental ministry of the local church. It was the stress upon the “new measures,” as Finney called them, which largely served to displace the sacramental and preaching ministry of the church, swapped out for the technique-oriented evangelism of modern America.

In fact, it could be argued that those forms of American evangelicalism which seek to entice so-called “seekers” to church by removing those things from the church service which offend them can be traced back to Finney’s “new measures.” Currently these “new measures” usually come to us couched in the language of marketing and sales, target groups, demographics, and tribalism. Whether it be Rick Warren, Joel Osteen, or even Billy Graham, there is no doubt that one branch of each of their respective intellectual family trees traces back to Charles Finney. And even if other branches in that same family tree can be traced back to Protestant forebears, these historic Protestant traits are now most certainly recessive. No doubt, Finney’s theological family tree and familial characteristics have dominated much of the American church.

Again, we need to remind ourselves that the Bible (summarized by the Canons) does not approach this subject from the perspective that everyone is entitled to a chance at heaven, and already possesses the natural ability to get there, if only they will. The Scriptures do not begin with human freedom, as the Pelagian argues. The Scriptures begin with the fall of Adam into sin, and the consequences of that event upon the entirety of the human race. To put this in Dwight Moody’s ballot box terms, we lost our vote and our freedom in the fall of Adam! Because the entire human race fell with Adam, we are everything that the Scriptures say about us–dead in sin, unwilling and unable to come to Christ through the mere exercise of our will.

This is why we must begin this discussion where the Bible does–with the fact of human sinfulness, and with the idea clearly fixed in our minds that no one deserves to go to heaven (rather, we deserve to be punished due to our sin), and that not one of us can do anything to get there. To start with the presupposition that unless we have free will to choose God whenever we wish, or else Christianity (and by implication, God) would be unfair, we are missing the point. God does not owe sinners anything. If we are thinking this way, we have imbibed way too deeply from our democratic and egalitarian culture. We are not approaching things, as we should, from the perspective on human nature given us in the Holy Scriptures.

As noted repeatedly throughout our unpacking of the Canons, the degree to which we think that we contribute something to our salvation is the degree to which we deny sola gratia. It was Charles Spurgeon who said, “he that thinks lightly of sin, thinks lightly of the savior.”

It is very simple. Either God saves sinners who are dead in sin through his sovereign election, calling them forth from the grave when they could contribute nothing, or else sinners have something good within them is that not somehow tainted, corrupted, polluted or damaged by the fall. As we have seen, the Scriptures teach the former rather than the latter. To add anything we do to grace alone, is to deny grace alone! You cannot have it either way.

As John Calvin put it in his famed Institutes, “Whatever mixture men study to add from the power of free-will to the grace of God, is only a corruption of it; just as if anyone should dilute good wine with dirty or bitter water” (2.5.15). Since we are sinful from head to toe, from hair to toenail, whatever our contribution we might add to God’s grace, only can serve to pollute, not to activate the grace of God!

When we look to answers for questions like, “Why does God save this one rather than that one?” we do well to do as the Canons remind us, recall to mind the words of the apostle Paul recorded in Ephesians 2:1-10:

And you were dead in the trespasses and sins in which you once walked, following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience— among whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind. But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ—by grace you have been saved— and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, so that in the coming ages he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus. For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast. For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.

It really is that simple. God saves sinners, by grace alone, through faith alone, on account of Christ alone. God does not tell sinners what they need to do so that they can save themselves.