Elbow Drop (Puritan Style)

"There are two rotten pillars which the fabric of late Arminianism (an egg of the old Pelagianism, which we had well hoped had long since chilled, but is sat upon and brooded by wanton wits of our degenerate and apostate spirits) doth principally stand.

"The one is, That God loveth all alike, Cain as well as Abel, Judas as the rest of the Apostles.

"The other is, That God giveth (nay is bound, "ex debito," so to do) both Christ, the great gift of his eternal love, for all alike to work out their redemption, and "vires credenda," power to believe in Christ to all alike to whom he gives the gospel; whereby that redemption may effectually be applied for their salvation, if they please to make right use of that which is so put into their power.

"The former destroys the free and special grace of God, by making it universal; the latter gives cause to man of glorying in himself rather than in God,--God concurring no farther to the salvation of a believer than a reprobate. Christ died for both alike;--God giving power of accepting Christ to both alike, men themselves determining the whole matter by their free-will; Christ making both savable, themselves make them to be saved.

"This cursed doctrine of theirs crosseth the main drift of the holy Scripture; which is to abase and pull down the pride of man, to make him even to despair of himself, and to advance and set up the glory of God's free grace from the beginning to the end of man's salvation. His hand hath laid the foundation of his spiritual house; his hand shall also finish it" (Prefatory remarks by Stanley Gower, who was a member of the Westminster Assembly, for John Owen's The Death of Death in the Death of Christ: A Treatise of the Redemption and Reconciliation that is in the Blood of Christ, with the Merit Thereof, and Satisfaction Wrought Thereby).

"The glory of God's free grace from the beginning to the end of man's salvation." Indeed.

Save Us!

"Christians are those who ask to be saved" (William H. Willimon & Stanley Hauerwas, Lord, Teach Us: The Lord's Prayer and the Christian Life, 87).

Salvation: Soul Renewal

"By salvation I mean, not barely, according to the vulgar notion, deliverance from hell, or going to heaven; but a present deliverance from sin, a restoration of the soul to its primitive health, its original purity; a recovery of the divine nature; the renewal of our souls after the image of God, in righteousness and true holiness, in justice, mercy and truth" (The Works of John Wesley, Vol. 8, p. 4, as quoted in George G. Hunter III, To Spread the Power: Church Growth in the Wesleyan Spirit, 40-41).

Thoughts for Young Men

"Leave nothing unsettled that is eternal. Run no risk when your soul is at stake. Believe me, the salvation of the soul is no easy matter. Every one needs a "great salvation," whether young or old; all need to be born again--all need to be washed in Christ's blood--all need to be sanctified by the Spirit. Happy is the man who does not leave these things uncertain, but never rests until he has the witness of the Spirit within him, testifying to him that he is a child of God" (J.C. Ryle, Thoughts for Young Men, 6).

Romish Theology: Advocate an Imperfect Atonement

"According to Romish theology, all past sins both as respects their eternal and temporal punishment are blotted out in baptism and also the eternal punishment of the future sins of the faithful. But for the temporal punishment of post-baptismal sins the faithful must make satisfaction either in this life or in purgatory. In opposition to every such notion of human satisfaction Protestants rightly contend that the satisfaction of Christ is the only satisfaction for sin and is so perfect and final that it leaves no penal liability for any sin of the believer" (John Murray, Redemption: Accomplished and Applied, 51).

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We live in strange times. Belief in purgatory within Protestantism is currently on the rise, see Christianity Today's guest column - "Purgatory is Hope" - by Kevin Timpe. The column begins:

A recent study suggests that belief in purgatory among Catholics in the United States is on the decline. But there is also reason for thinking that belief in purgatory is on the rise among Protestants. My own attraction to the doctrine comes primarily from the work of a Wesleyan philosopher, Jerry Walls. While Walls' Hell: The Logic of Damnation (Notre Dame, 1992) is one of numerous extended philosophical treatments of hell, his Heaven: The Logic of Eternal Joy (Oxford, 2002) is a rare book-length treatment of the philosophical issues surrounding heaven. Heaven also contains a chapter providing the best philosophical defense of purgatory that I'm aware of. Walls there argues that the Christian doctrine of "salvation must involve changing us to love God as we ought [for] the aim of salvation is to make us holy, and this is what fits us for heaven." Walls completed his trilogy with Purgatory: The Logic of Total Transformation (Oxford, 2011). It is dedicated to defending the doctrine of purgatory "as a rational theological inference from other important biblical and theological commitments … for those who take seriously the role of human freedom in salvation."

 Wesleyan-Arminian theology and Romish theology are kissing cousins: both advocate an imperfect atonement. Since their understanding of the atonement is not fully biblical, so too inferred doctrines, e.g. purgatory, human participation in salvation, etc., are not fully biblical.

Word of God: Creates Faith

"The Word [God's word of salvation], all-powerful in its effect and salvific in its benefit, creates the faith that receives it" (Thomas J. Davis, This Is My Body: The Presence of Christ in Reformation Thought, 58).

Christ's Righteousness: Type of Righteousness Needed by Sinners

"Now, what righteousness is equal to the justification of sinners? The only righteousness conceivable that will meet the requirements of our situation as sinners and meet the requirements of a full and irrevocable justification is the righteousness of Christ. This implies his obedience and therefore his incarnation, death, and resurrection. In a word, the necessity of the atonement is inherent and essential to justification. A salvation from sin divorced from justification is an impossibility and justification of sinners without the God-righteousness of the Redeemer is unthinkable" (John Murray, Redemption--Accomplished and Applied, 16-17).

Holy Ghost: Special and Peculiar Gift

That "Christ dwells in our hearts by faith," and carries on His inward work by His Spirit, is clear and plain. But if we mean to say that beside, and over, and above this there is some mysterious indwelling of Christ in a believer, we must be careful what we are about. Unless we take care, we shall find ourselves ignoring the work of the Holy Ghost. We shall be forgetting that in the Divine economy of man's salvation election is the special work of God the Father--atonement, mediation, and intercession, the special work of God the Son--and sanctification, the special work of God the Holy Ghost. We shall be forgetting that our Lord said, when He went away, that He would send us another Comforter, who should "abide with us" for ever, and, as it were, take His place. (John xiv. 16.) In short, under the idea that we are honouring [sic] Christ, we shall find that we are dishonouring [sic] His special and peculiar gift--the Holy Ghost (J. C. Ryle, Holiness, xiii).

Storytelling: Salvation

There are several ways to tell the story of Salvation. An "act" is a division of drama. It is a way to "unitize" the various elements of story. You can tell the story of Salvation with more than one narrative structure.

The Story of Salvation in a Single-Act

Title: The Glory of God
     All is unitized by the structure of the theme "Glory of God".

The Story of Salvation in Two-Acts

Title: Of God's Covenant with Man *
     Act 1 - Covenant of Works (made with Adam)
     Act 2 - Covenant of Grace (made with Jesus Christ, the Second Adam)
         
The Story of Salvation in Three-Acts

Title: A Trinitarian Story in Three Harmonious Acts
     Act 1 - God the Father Chose Us in Christ Before the Foundation of the World **
     Act 2 - Jesus Christ the Son of God is Sent:
          Serves the Father
          Creates a Place (Chosen Humanity) for Spirit to Indwell
          Accomplishes Redemption and Ministers to the Chosen
     Act 3 - Holy Spirit of God is Sent:
          Serves the Father
          Indwells the Place (Chosen Humanity) that Jesus Christ Prepared for Him
          Applies Benefits of Redemption and Ministers to the Chosen

The Story of Salvation in Four-Acts

Title: Sitting Down (Feasting) in the Kingdom of God in Four Scene Changes ***
     Act 1 - People Come From the East
     Act 2 - People Come From the West
     Act 3 - People Come From the North
     Act 4 - People Come From the South
         
* See Ephesians 1:4.
** See Westminster Confession of Faith, Chapter VII.
*** See structure in Luke 13:29.

Van Til: Doctrine of Salvation

"... Christ must subdue us in order to give us knowledge. But this subduing of us by Christ is done through his Spirit. It is the Spirit who takes the things of Christ and gives them unto us." ...

"For this reason we must observe at this juncture that the Spirit who applies the work of Christ is himself also a member of the ontological Trinity. He would have to be. Unless he were, the work of salvation would not be the work of God alone. If God was to be maintained in his incommunicable attributes [the attributes of God that cannot be communicated or gifted to objects or persons in the universe; e.g., the aseity of God, immutability of God, omnipresence of God, etc.], the Spirit of God, not man, had to effect the salvation of man. The only alternative to this would be that man could at some point take the initiative in the matter of his own salvation. This would imply that the salvation wrought by Christ could be frustrated by man. Suppose that none should accept the salvation offered to them. In that case the whole of Christ's work would be in vain, and the eternal God would be set at naught by temporal man. Even if we say that in the case of any one individual sinner the question of salvation is in the last analysis dependent upon man rather than upon God, that is, if we say that man can of himself accept or reject the gospel as he pleases, we have made the eternal God dependent upon man. We have then, in effect, denied the incommunicable attributes of God. If we refuse to mix the eternal and the temporal at the point of creation and at the point of the incarnation, we must also refuse to mix them at the point of salvation" (Cornelius Van Til, The Defense of The Faith, 40).