Models of Grace: Part One.
Models of Grace: Part One
Theodore Zachariades
I have long been thinking about writing of my transitions in theology over the last twenty years or so. I was saved as a young man in my 21st year on the island of Cyprus after moving there with my family. I had been born and raised in England by nominal Greek Orthodox Cypriot ex-patriots. They had fled for a better life from the troubled times of the late fifties and early sixties of the twentieth century in Cyprus. To make a long story short, as the saying goes, I will briefly tell of my conversion to what I call authentic Christianity (C.S. Lewis might have called it mere Christianity with half a foot in the evangelical door). I was never an atheist, but I had never really thought much about religion as a youngster growing up in a lower class London of the 1970s. I was more interested in football (soccer), girls, and music. However, in a sociology class at North London College, I distinctly remember getting visibly agitated at my professor, let’s name him Mr. Nonfide, as he was irreverently mocking the idea of God, or a god. His particular ploy was: “if God [or a god] existed, why wouldn’t he just show himself and settle all bets, so to speak?” I don’t recall much else but I do remember standing for the challenge and indicated that belief in God was not mere superstition, and that there were other things we as rational people believed in that could not be seen. This was perhaps as close to faith, as I ever got.
Well, back to my emigration to Cyprus in 1985. I soon found myself in the National Guard as I signed up for the 26 month period of service that is compulsory by conscription for all males. Even though my relationship with Cyprus was merely days old they accounted my physical lineage from both my mother and father, who were, among other things, bona fide Cypriots, born and bred, no doubt. So the connection was established and there was no going back.
About half way through my tenure as a private in “the army,” as we would call it, I realized that something strange had happened to my parents. They got “religious” all of a sudden, but in a non-religious sort of way. I think of their transition from the trappings of Greek Orthodoxy to Evangelical piety as a move from faithless religion to religionless faith. Of course, what I mean by all this is that although under the banner of Eastern Orthodoxy from birth, my parents hadn’t really a shred of faith in the church, the Bible, the traditions, and especially the priests. Yet, that id stuck. “Chi O” is what they stamp on your birth certificate, the Greek characters that are equivalent to “Christian Orthodox.” So the move toward a genuine faith that results in a personal relation with Jesus and a real encounter with the living God via the Bible is really refreshing, and it has none of the ceremonial and liturgical religious marks of the Eastern Church. A genuine faith without all the religious extras. Still, for me, it was all weird.
I agreed one Sunday to go to church with my parents as I was on a pass for the weekend. I was a little hesitant and did not know what to expect. My fears were cast aside as soon as we arrived. The building looked nothing like a church, at least not like the elaborate cathedral like edifices common in Orthodoxy. Once inside, there was not a trace of any burning incense. Nor were there any candles on display for sale, nor any icons that had to be kissed in visible reverence, nor was the black robed figure with long beard to match to be found lurking about, seeking whom he may. . . ! Whatever this place was, it was light years from what I envisioned Christianity to be.
The songs were in a tongue that was known, even though Greek was my second language, everything was done and said in an accessible manner. What struck me immediately, however, were the girls. I mean there were pretty young females at this gathering. The only “girls” you ever see at a Greek Orthodox church were black clad women in their fifties and sixties, and that is just in the youth group. This was much better than expected.
I was introduced by my parents to one of the two ministers, a younger man by the name of Theologos. This is truly ironic as his name means theologian! My folks told me that he was not only called Theologos but that he was a Theologos. As such, he could answer all my questions. I later learned that this man led my parents to the Lord. In the sovereign providence of God, he did the same with me not more than nine or ten months after that initial visit. But let me fill in a few more details.
The other minister, the senior pastor, was senior in more than one respect. He was 96 years old, and still going strong. He preached the old reformed faith that he learned many years earlier from Presbyterian missionaries that laid the foundations of what was to become the Greek Evangelical Church of Nicosia, Cyprus. I later had the chance to meet with this dear old saint, and one of the gifts from him was a Greek Translation of the Westminster Confession of Faith. This was my “baptism into the Reformed faith.” But the other minister, the theologian, was more in the Arminian camp, and it was he, and not the saintly old man, who was able and available to disciple me. So after I attended youth meetings and started to become a regular on Friday nights, by the Lord’s grace I was led to the recognition of my own sin and I realized that I was lost without Christ and I cried out in faith for Him to save me. That evening on Friday, December 19, 1986, to borrow from another Englishman’s conversion testimony, my heart was strangely warmed. My growth began immediately as I was hungry to learn from Scriptures and passionate about sharing Christ. Theologos, who had graduated from Bible College in Greece, where he was from, started to throw hints in my direction about the need for a biblical education. I resisted quite firmly. All the training I needed I could get from him. Also, I was not very good at school, so to speak. In fact, I hated school while I was growing up in London. Academics was clearly off the table, as far as I was concerned. God, I might add, had other plans. . . .
So, Theologos gave me a theological foundation. This was a type of hybrid: Calminianism. Neither, fully Calvinist or fully Arminian. I initially accepted this as a great insight into scripture. It was the teaching of the systematics professor and president at the Greek Bible School in Athens from whom Theologos had learned it. It was famously labeled by the professor, Mr. Baldwin, as the “Balanced View.” This was laced through with dispensationalist contours and the rapture doctrine had pride of place as our ever-present hope. The reality of Christ was the anchor of this “new birthed” theological reality that was, happily, short of all the weird Greek Orthodox stuff. When I matriculated in 1988 this was the primary theology that I would be taught over the next three years. But in my second year, I started to read books in the library, conducted my own independent research, and finally became a Calvinist without wanting to, or from any pressure by others. It was primarily a result of Acts and Ephesians speaking to me about the unconditional nature of God’s electing grace. The defenses began tumbling. By the time I graduated in 1991, I was a confirmed Calvinist struggling only with the doctrine of atonement, and with the difficulties of Lordship salvation given my understanding of grace.
The Dallas Seminary connection helps to explain some of the theological ideas that were transmitted. Three of my profs were graduates of Dallas Theological Seminary, the Mecca of dispensationalism in the late seventies and early eighties. Another was from Western Conservative Baptist Seminary, also a dispensational school. There was only one prof who was non-dispensational, but he still adhered to the pre-millennialist scheme, ala George Eldon Ladd. The Bible College I attended was thus heavily influenced by the teachings of Lewis Sperry Chafer, Charles Ryrie, J. Dwight Pentecost, John F. Walvoord, and many others.
One of the teachers at the school introduced me to the writings of Zane C. Hodges, particularly The Gospel Under Siege. The reason was that there happened to be a chapter on First John in Hodges’s work, and at the time I was leading a Bible study on First John. I read the chapter in one sitting, but I was intrigued so I read the entire volume. This was a short book, but it clarified some of the things that I had been exposed to, especially the notion of Grace. This was my entry into the so-called Grace Theology that was characteristic of Dallas Seminary. Dallas boasted itself as a bastion of grace theology. The majority of its professors thought themselves as being the authentic heirs to Lewis Sperry Chafer’s grace approach to salvation. Chafer was a co-founder of the school prior to it being named Dallas Theological Seminary, and according to my profs, he was considered, even post mortem, as the theologian on campus having authored an eight volume magnum opus that established the system of dispensationalism on a surer academic footing than it had been in its earliest existence found only in the notes of Cyrus I. Scofield’s Bible. What Hodges and some disciples of his had done, was to take a specific teaching of Chafer, that is, the claim that over 150 times the NT teaches salvation upon the condition of faith alone, and made it the non-negotiable axiom. Sola Fide, was the battle cry for this group, even as it was for the reformers in the sixteenth century. Of course, there were clear differences. I will attend to these later. For now, let us consider this approach.
Even at Dallas there were a few distinct groups. I recall listening on tape to a book review gathering conducted by S. Lewis Johnson, a former professor of Zane Hodges, tackling Hodges’s The Gospel Under Siege. This made for some interesting discussion as Hodges would respond eight days later. Johnson was a committed five point Calvinist and a dispensationalist, who at the time was a teaching elder at the famed congregation, Believer’s Chapel in Dallas. He always considered himself a “Dallas Man.” He challenged many of Hodges’s points and suggested, with only a slight tongue in cheek, that the book ought to have been titled, Antinomianism Under Siege, as this is what Hodges represented. I will not belabor the point here, but it is sufficient to note that many who were in fact sympathetic to a non-Lordship model, that countered the view as expounded by John F. MacArthur in the late eighties in the book, The Gospel According to Jesus, actually stood midway between the two extremes as they saw them. On the one hand you had full Lordship Salvation, on the other you had Hodges and his followers. In the middle, perhaps best represented by Ryrie and to some degree by S. Lewis Johnson, there was another group. I found myself embracing the extreme side of the no-Lordship model of grace. Let me explain.
The idea that we are saved by grace is the quintessential evangelical doctrine. So embracing this as it was taught by my profs, and defended in such books as Ryrie’s So Great Salvation, Hodges’s The Gospel Under Siege, Absolutely Free, and Grace in Eclipse, I thought I had arrived theologically. The great enemy was Lordship Salvation, with its confusion of works and faith. As such it could not be authentically a grace approach to salvation, or so I thought. In my mind at the time, I considered that John F. MacArthur’s The Gospel According to Jesus was more akin to Roman Catholicism that evangelicalism. I even wrote my undergrad thesis on “The Lordship Salvation Debate.” I graduated fully wanting to grow in this approach.
At seminary in Toronto, I deepened in this way of thinking and at some point in the early 1990s I joined the Grace Evangelical Society [GES]. This was an organization still in its relative infancy at the time, that was created by Dr. Robert Wilkin, who was briefly a professor at Multnomah School of the Bible or Multnomah College, as it became later. Wilkin was eager to start a loose fellowship around the distinctives of Grace Theology as interpreted by Zane Hodges. Of course, there were a variety of persons affiliated with the group as members. These people may have had a slightly different approach to some passages of the Bible, but all were committed to No-Lordship salvation. A focus on grace was what they had in mind and published a newsletter that was re-titled, Grace in Focus. I was able to get a couple of articles published with them as I was well within the party’s guidelines. The also had a slightly more academic Journal of the Grace Evangelical Society that was my pride possession when I was able to purchase back issues and have a complete set. All things seemed well.
What was missing from the society was a defense of Calvinism. In fact, often Calvinism was maligned as being opposed to Grace Theology. I started to get uncomfortable but was not ready to jump ship. I thought that I could be tolerated just as folks like Ryrie, who definitely advocated unconditional election, potentially was.
Some bizarre readings emerged from within the ranks. In Hodges aforementioned Absolutely Free, he had a chapter on Repentance, which, in a nutshell, essentially removed this “grace” from the gospel rather reserving it as a condition for intimate fellowship with God, but not as a condition for eternal life. To receive salvation one must have faith alone. The way that faith was explained left it sounding as if mere intellectual assent was enough. This was often the charge from those opposed to GES and its grace oriented message. Those who repented may or may not exercise faith, and until they did there was no eternal life. This became a bit of a problem for me. Another matter that was raised by Hodges was Romans 10:9-10. Hodges stated that the condition believe and confess was to be seen as speaking to two different concepts. Faith alone was needed to embrace justification or righteousness, whereas Confession was necessary only to avoid the wrath of God in the here and now, that is, the temporary wrath of God. This ingeniously defended view with its sophisticated exegesis looks legitimate but it is surely something strange when one considers that Romans is a powerhouse of Gospel proclamation. I wrote a paper defending the traditional view of Romans 10:9-10 and presented it at a regional meeting of the Evangelical Theological Society.
GES was robbing these texts from within the sphere of gospel proclamation that began to cause my serious misgivings. I wanted to stay within its ranks but GES was becoming all the more bizarre and it continued in its anti-Calvinist crusade. There were articles defending faith as something anyone who wanted to could exercise and, in this sense, it was clearly Arminian, as far as labels go.
By this time I was a committed five-point (or seven point) Calvinist. Also, I started to read more widely from reformed and puritan types, so around 2005-2006, I resigned from the Grace Evangelical Society. My (re)turn to Reformed theology was gaining traction. In 2007, I also resigned from my congregation due to misgivings about Calvinism and Reformed theology. So by God’s grace I was involved in a church plant that embraced the First London Baptist Confession of Faith 1646, 2d. ed. as our standard (since 2011 it has become the Second London Baptist Confession of 1689 that is our confession of faith, primarily due to my growth in understanding Baptist history). Home at last!
So What? This is often asked of me. Did it really matter? Does theology really have to be so divisive? Was this more akin to a tempest in a teapot? I have to explain the model of grace that operated in GES, and the way the model of grace operates in Reformed theology.
The Free Grace movement defends a model of grace that wants to offer free grace to anyone and everyone. In this they take seriously the Great Commission, to preach the gospel to every creature. The Gospel as defined by the movement is that faith alone is the only condition for eternal life, and that anyone that believes that God grants eternal life solely on the condition of faith has fulfilled that condition. The basis for this free grace is Christ’s saving work, of course. The movement largely embraces an un-restricted atonement that covers all the sins of all men, only unbelief excepted. So one has to merely believe, because one wants to, and furthermore, has the ability to, and so one will become a recipient of eternal life. So grace is offered in this system but it is a synergistic model of grace, as the faith that one believes with is generated by the individual. This is precisely why I was finding it increasingly difficult to remain in the GES. Although, strictly speaking, this is a sola fide model, it is not in reality a sola gratia model, as much as they want it to be. Its model of grace is flawed in that it does not recognize the inability of fallen sinners to believe without divine efficacious intervention. Preaching to all that all they must do is believe that Jesus saves by faith alone, and insisting that faith is trust and nothing more has led to the charge of easy believism. And given the way some have preached this model of grace, myself included, the charge sticks quite well. In an effort to avoid Paul’s wrath of Galatians by not preaching another gospel, which is really not another, the sola fideism of GES has become suspect in that it does not line up with the serious call of discipleship seen in Jesus himself. Maybe John MacArthur had a point after all!
The problem, it seems to me, is that the GES model of grace operates with sola fide as a filter. What I mean by this is that any passage of scripture or any conception of salvation that is not worded in a sola fide manner, must by definition be non-gospel. So for example, Jesus says “repent for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.” This is brushed off as something for the Jews related to an earthly kingdom offer [because of GES's dispensationalism]. Or, as in Robert Wilkin’s dissertation on Repentance, it is seen a la Charles Ryrie as being the flip side of faith but not a separate step. Repentance is thus a “change of mind,” certainly not a turning from sin! Later, Wilkin repented of his view of repentance and fully embraced the strange view of Hodges his mentor where repentance is never linked with eternal life. Confession as seen in Rom. 10 cannot be a gospel call. Turning to God from idols to serve the living God is ingeniously defended by Chafer as a single turn, and that of faith, despite the clear statement of Paul that it is a turning to serve the living God. Clearly, more than trust is at stake. The parable of the prodigal son is re-interpreted to show the falling away of a believer and his repentance to harmonious relation/fellowship with his father, and is not salvific in the least. After all, he was a son when he left!
Making sola fide the filter through which all scriptures must pass, and defining faith in a minimalist sense shows that despite its best efforts, the Grace Evangelical Society and the Free Grace movement is working with a model of grace that is highly questionable. In this model of grace discipleship cannot be the same as the gospel call, as clearly Jesus demands more than faith, so how could it be faith alone? Again, the problem includes the way in which the lowest common denominator for defining faith, as trust or belief, is defended. Despite its rallying cry, sola fide, being that also of the Protestant reformers, this is a far cry from traditional protestant reformed theology, especially, its doctrine of salvation. The next installment will consider a Reformed approach, which in my opinion, is a better understanding of grace that coheres with the entirety of the Bible.
