Untitled Sermon

I think it safe to say that in evangelical churches the primary competing views are between the Calvinistic and Arminian options. These can be summarized with the acronym TULIP and the palindrome DOGOD.

Calvinist View (TULIP)

Arminian View (DOGOD)

Total Depravity: Sin has effected human beings in their moral and mental faculties. They are not necessarily as bad as they can be, but their free will is enslaved to sin and thus no one is free to choose to believe in God.

Deprived Ability: Human beings are impacted by sin but God’s prevenient grace enables them to believe in him if they so choose. Humans are in a depraved state, but not a powerless state in sin.

Unconditional Election: God elects people to salvation not because of any quality that makes them worthy, nor because God knows in advance who will choose him. God elects out of his own free decision to give salvation to some who do not deserve it.

Open Election: Election is determined by faith for it is faith that incorporates one into the church, the elect people of God. Election is, then, indeterminate or open, and realized by the act of faith.

Limited Atonement: Jesus’ death was only for the elect. Jesus did not die for the whole world, only for those predestined to salvation.

General Atonement: Jesus died for the sins of the whole world and not just for the elect.

Irresistible Grace: Those whom God elects will come to salvation in the end because God’s grace is efficient and effective. It is not that those who are elect cannot resist God’s grace, but in the end the elect will always succumb to grace.

Opposable Grace: People can and do resist God’s grace when they fail to appropriate prevenient grace and disbelieve the message of the gospel.

Perseverance of the Saints: Those whom God has elected will assuredly continue in their faith and live with God forever. It is not the case that the elect cannot backslide or fall into sin, but ultimately they will persevere in their faith due to divine enabling.

Danger of Apostasy: It is possible for believers to fall from their state of grace into apostasy, a position from which there is no possibility of restoration.

Many of the issues of TULIP versus DOGOD will be tackled throughout this volume. Suffice it to say that on the issue of predestination, I find the Calvinist scheme to be inherently more plausible than its Arminian counterpart. I regard Arminianism as an understandable theological option within evangelicalism; it is a type of intra-Protestant renewal aimed at countenancing divine sovereignty with divine love,56 and I appreciate the gravity of some of its objections to the Calvinistic scheme.57 Calvinists and Arminians can agree that “God is involved in people’s lives before they hear and respond to his call.”58

Michael F. Bird, Evangelical Theology: A Biblical and Systematic Introduction (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2013), 528–529.