We affirm that God initiated salvation by sending Jesus Christ as the sacrifice for the sins of all people. God desires all people to be saved, and any person who hears the message of the Gospel can choose to believe in Christ and be saved. This view in no way implies that individuals can save themselves or merit God's favor. Rather, the grace of God enables every person to respond, convicts all people of their sin, and draws all people to the cross of Christ. Those who hear and freely respond in faith to the message of the Gospel will be saved, but those who reject the offer of salvation can blame only themselves for their lost condition.
Does Human Depravity Mean That Humans Are Not Free to Respond to the Gospel? By Michael Cariño, from the book “Grace For All: Understanding God’s Plan of Salvation”, 2024.
Reformed-Calvinist believers teach that God decides or determines all things, including whether each person will be saved. They believe that God from eternity selects certain individuals to be saved.[1]
Non-Calvinist believers disagree with the Calvinist teaching that God determines all things. Instead, we believe the Bible reveals that, in His wisdom and love, God sovereignly causes some things but allows other things, including whether or not those who hear the Gospel will freely choose to repent of their sin and trust in Jesus.[2]
Human Depravity and Sinfulness
The doctrine of human depravity is very important to Christian theology and is very significant for all Christians. It is here that we see humanity’s fallen sinful condition and hence the whole reason for salvation. Before any person is saved, he/she must realize that he is lost as a result of his sin and depravity.
That is why the doctrine of depravity is one of the most orthodox Christian teachings. The Fall of Adam is so important to the doctrine of salvation. It is very sad that most Calvinist think that they alone have the monopoly on the teaching of depravity. The truth is one does not have to be Calvinist to believe in the depravity of human beings.
The fall of Adam plunged humanity into sin and death. In our fallen, depraved, spiritually dead condition, humans are described a number of ways in the Bible: “ungodly” (Romans 5:6), “children of disobedience” (Colossians 3:6), “children of wrath” (Ephesians 2:3), “servants of sin” (Romans 6:20), “abominable and filthy” (Job 15:15), “foolish, disobedient, deceived” (Titus 3:3), “ sheep gone astray” (Isaiah 53:6), “in darkness” (1 Peter 2:9), “blinded by Satan” (2 Corinthians 4:4), “with a heart full of sin and wickedness” (Mark 7:20–23). Because of our depraved condition, every aspect of our humanity and everything we do is tainted with sin (Proverbs 21:4; 27).
Because of mankind’s spiritual condition, there is a great gap between God and humanity (Luke 16:26). Unregenerate humans are said to be God’s “enemies” (Romans 5:10), under the “condemnation” (John 3:18) and “wrath of God” (John 3:36). The natural man is “alienated from the life of God” (Ephesians 4:18), “guilty before God” (Romans 3:19), and “cannot please God” (Romans 8:8).
But if salvation is “by grace” (Ephesians 2:8) and “not of works” (Ephesians 2:9), then as humans, we cannot do anything to save ourselves, merit God’s favor, or demand that God save us. How can anyone ever possibly be saved? The disciples once asked: “Who can be saved?” (Matthew 19:25). That is why Christ died for our sins, so that whosoever believes in Christ shall be saved (John 3:36).
The apostles were asked, “Sirs, what must I do to be saved? And they said, ‘Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and you shall be saved…’” (Acts 16:30–31).
This is the reason why we disagree with Calvinism. In the Bible the sinner believes and he is saved; in Calvinism the sinner hopes he is one of the “elect” (prechosen ones) and then waits for God to save him (only if he is one of the elect). But the truth is, God made a way for all people to have a chance to find mercy and grace if they choose to trust Christ.
“All people have refused to obey God. God has given them all over to their stubborn ways, so that God can show mercy to all.” (Romans 11:32, ICB)
“For the grace of God has appeared that offers salvation to all people.” (Titus 2:11, NIV)
“Yes, Adam’s one sin brings condemnation for everyone, but Christ’s one act of righteousness brings a right relationship with God and new life for everyone.” (Romans 5:18, NLT)
Spiritual Death and Human Response
Advocates of Calvinism typically teach that because people are spiritually dead, they are naturally unable to respond to God. Rather, the unsaved need God’s grace to cause them to be born again so they can believe in Jesus.
They interpret the doctrine of total depravity to mean that unsaved people have a “total inability” to respond to God and be saved. The Canons of Dort of Calvinism states, “Therefore, all people are conceived in sin and are born children of wrath, unfit for any saving good, inclined to evil, dead in their sins, and slaves to sin; without the grace of the regenerating Holy Spirit they are neither willing nor able to return to God, to reform their distorted nature, or even to dispose themselves to such reform.”[3]
For Calvinists, sinners are unable to respond to God apart from the regenerating work of the Spirit. In other words, sinners “must be saved first” before they can believe the Gospel. We do not have free will. James Montgomery Boice and Philip Graham Ryken explain this Calvinist view: “In this sad and pervasively sinful state we have no inclination to seek God, and therefore cannot seek him or even respond to the Gospel when it is presented to us. In our unregenerate state, we do not have free will so far as ‘believing on’ or ‘receiving’ Jesus Christ as Savior is concerned.”[4]
They argue that unbelievers cannot respond to the Gospel by repenting and believing in Jesus when the Gospel is presented. Calvinists teach, consistent with the Canons of Dort, that people believe in Jesus only after they are born again.
We disagree with this faulty teaching. As Non-Calvinist Evangelical Christians, we disagree with their misunderstanding that being “spiritually dead” means total inability. We reject the claim that people are unable to respond to the Gospel and believe in Jesus.[5]
Scripture uses various metaphors for sinners who have not yet trusted in Jesus for their salvation. Sinners are referred to as sick (Matt 9:12), blind (Matt 15:14; 2 Cor 4:4), lovers of darkness (John 3:19), and dead (Luke 15:24; John 5:24; Eph 2:1). The problem is that Calvinists misinterpret spiritual deadness by inserting the idea that the unsaved cannot repent of sin and believe in Jesus unless God first grants them faith. However, Scripture does not require such an interpretation of spiritual death, many theologians reject the idea that regeneration precedes faith.[6]
In the book, What Love Is This?: Calvinism’s Misrepresentation of God, David Hunt argues that spiritually dead people can respond to the Gospel. God invites all sinners to receive the free gift of eternal life, and those who respond positively to God’s invitation will be saved:
The Bible makes it clear that salvation is the gift of God through Jesus Christ, and thus no one can purchase, earn or merit His salvation. It must be received as a free gift. What ability of any kind is required to receive a gift? None, of course. Then how can any sinner suffer from an inability to receive the free gift of eternal life? Unquestionably, to receive the gift of salvation one must believe the Gospel. The very command, “Go ye into all the world, and preach the Gospel to every creature” (Mark 16:15) implies the ability of every person to believe the Gospel.[7]
Through the centuries this Non-Calvinist understanding of Scripture concerning human responsibility to freely respond to the Gospel has been consistently expressed by many Christians. A prominent Baptist wrote, “The individual not only must act for himself he is the only one who can. God has made him competent.”[8] A.H. Strong insisted, “Yet there is a certain remnant of freedom left to man… The sinner can… seek God from motives of self-interest… the sinner can… give attention to divine truth.”[9] Griffith Thomas wrote, “Total depravity does not mean the absolute loss of… the freedom of the soul in choosing, enabling it to determine conscious action. In this sense our freedom is real and the Fall has not affected it…. Fallen man has the faculty of will, as he has other faculties…”[10] In the same vein, W. L. Pettingill argued from Scripture, “Whosoever will may come. He is only to come, and God does all the rest.”[11] [12]
In the Bible, the metaphor of “spiritual deadness” points to the language of relational-spiritual separation or “lostness”, not to a literal physical cadaver. In other words, “spiritual death” is different from “physical death”. In the garden, Adam and Eve, who died spiritually when they ate the forbidden fruit, were able to hear from and respond to God (Gen 3:10–13). In the parable of the prodigal son, the spiritually dead person (the son) was able to return to his father (Luke 15:24). The son returning to the father depicts a sinner’s repentance. The spiritually dead son was able to repent of his sin and return to his father. In John 5:24, a spiritually dead person is able to hear and believe in Jesus.[13]
The metaphor of “spiritual deadness” points to the language of relational-spiritual separation or “lostness”, not to a literal physical cadaver. In other words, “spiritual death” is different from “physical death”.
Calvinists wrongly conflate the metaphor of being raised from spiritual death (Eph 2:1) with the story of Lazarus being raised from literal physical death (John 11). Recognizing that people are spiritually dead does not necessarily mean assuming that sinners cannot believe in Christ.[14]
In Scripture, spiritually dead people can and do respond to God. The apostles preached to unregenerated sinners with the call to repent of sin and believe in Jesus in order to be saved (Acts 2:38; 3:19; 8:22; 20:21; 26:20). God’s command to repent implies that people are able to repent. It would be unjust for God to command a task and then judge people who failed to do what He commanded if they were unable to do so.[15]
“The time has come,” He said. “The kingdom of God has come near. Repent and believe the Good News!” (Mark 1:15, NIV)
“In the past God overlooked such ignorance, but now He commands all people everywhere to repent.” (Acts 17:30, NIV)
“And this is His command: to believe in the name of his Son, Jesus Christ.” (1 John 3:23, NIV)
As Non-Calvinists, we believe that God desires the salvation of every person, commands every person to repent and believe in Jesus, and draws every person to Himself (John 12:32). Faith in Christ is the only means of salvation. [16]
To assert that God grants faith to only some people is to wrongly affirm that God desires only some people to believe in Jesus. Henry Thiessen observes, “It would seem very strange if God should call upon all men everywhere to repent (Acts 17:30; 2 Peter 3:9) and believe (Mark 1:14, 15), when only some persons may exclusively receive the gift of repentance and faith.”[17]
William Lane Craig is correct when he said in his video lecture entitled “If We’re Dead in Our Sin, How Can We Respond to God?”, that the fact that people are dead in trespasses and sins does not mean that they are unable to respond to God’s grace:
I am saying that a person can freely respond to God’s grace and the drawing on his heart, and that it is not irresistible… I take very seriously these passages in the New Testament that says God is not willing that any should perish but that all should reach repentance. God’s desire is that all persons be saved and come to a knowledge of the truth. If you take those passages literally and at face value, that must mean that God does not choose to give saving grace to some persons… On my view, I would say that God does offer saving grace to every person but some obstinately push it from them. They resist it and so they fail to be saved.
Paul says we are dead in our trespasses and sin. This is interpreted by Reformed-Calvinists people to mean that we are utterly comatose, that we have no will or ability to respond whatsoever. I think that that is reading things into the text that isn’t there.
The idea of being dead in trespasses and sins means that there is no spiritual life in us; we are under the condemnation and wrath of God. We are destined for hell. We are not saved. But it doesn’t mean that we are like cadavers. We are still persons who have mental cognitive faculties that are functioning and can choose to respond or resist God’s grace.
Apart from the prevenient grace of God, no one would come to Him. So, you’ve got to have, as your first step, God taking the initiative — convicting and drawing people to Himself. But the fact that people are dead in trespasses and sins doesn’t mean that they are no longer rational individuals endowed with libertarian freedom who can respond to God’s grace. That is reading things into the text that just isn’t there.
It seems to me that what Paul is saying, as we’ve seen, is that you have the ability to have a response of faith to the preaching of the Word and that it is up to you then whether or not you will respond.[18]
We can affirm both the sinfulness of humanity and at the same time also affirm the ability of sinners to receive or reject the Gospel message. This is why the New Hampshire Confession of Faith in 1833 declared that “Nothing prevents the salvation of the greatest sinner on earth except his own voluntary refusal to submit to the Lord Jesus Christ, which refusal will subject him to an aggravated condemnation.” Rather than describing people as unable to respond to God, the said confession claims that “nothing prevents” a sinner’s salvation except the sinner’s “voluntary refusal” to come and take the free gift of salvation.[19]
“Come!” Let the one who is thirsty come; and let the one who wishes take the free gift of the water of life. (Revelation 22:17, NIV)
“Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest.” (Matthew 11:28, NIV)
“Jesus stood and said in a loud voice, “Let anyone who is thirsty come to me and drink.” (John 7:37, NIV)
“…yet you refuse to come to me to have life.” (John 5:40, NIV)
In Soteriology101, an article entitled “Born Dead?” stresses that the analogy of being “dead” doesn’t necessarily imply “corpse-like inability”:
Are we born dead like Lazarus, a corpse rotting in the tomb (a link scripture never draws), or are we dead like the Prodigal, a loved one living in rebellion? Scripture supports the latter rather than the former: “For this son of mine was dead and has come to life again; he was lost and has been found.’ And they began to celebrate” (Luke 15:24). Spiritual deadness seems to be equated with “separateness,” “lostness,” or “in rebellion,” not as “total moral inability to respond” … “Deadness” here connotes the idea of being separated, like the son was from his father, not the incapacitation of the will to respond to God’s appeal to be reconciled from our separation.[20]
In the book God’s Provision For All: A Defense of God’s Goodness, Leighton Flowers makes an excellent point that we can affirm humanity’s complete culpability for sin, but we do not agree that God has disabled sinners from responding to His own invitation to believe the Good News:
“Are we to believe that a good God would send a light that is bright enough to condemn all people, but yet too dim for any lost person to actually respond in faith to it? More significantly, are God’s appeals for the lost to be reconciled from their fallen condition insufficient to enable a fallen person to respond willingly to those appeals?… [The truth is] it is possible for us to affirm mankind’s complete culpability for sin while still rejecting the notion that God has disabled sinners from responding to His own appeals to be reconciled.”[21]
Steve Lemke, in the book Whosoever Will: A Biblical-Theological Critique of Five-Point Calvinism, contends that God requires human response as a condition to the free gift of salvation:
“Humans do not do anything to earn or deserve salvation. Humans are too sinful in nature to seek God independently or take the initiative in their own salvation. Humans can come to salvation only as they are urged to by the conviction of the Holy Spirit, and they are drawn to Christ as He is lifted up in proclamation of the Gospel. God’s grace provides the necessary and sufficient conditions for salvation. However, God in His freedom has sovereignly decided that He will give the gift of salvation to those who believe, who trust Jesus Christ as Savior and Lord. Only God provides for human salvation, and He alone. Before He does so, God requires humans to respond. If humans do not respond, then He does not save.”[22]
In other words, the Bible makes it plain that Christ will draw all people unto Himself (John 12:32). However, every person will make his own decision to trust Christ or to reject Him (John 3:36). Jesus is “the True Light that gives light to everyone…” (John 1:9) that is why every sinner is given opportunity to respond to God through creation (Romans 1:19,20), conscience (Romans 2:11–16), and the preaching of the Gospel (Romans 10:9–15) so every person is without excuse. People go to hell, not because of their inability to come to Christ, but because they choose not to come to Christ (John 5:40).
All Evangelical Christians should affirm that sin separates all human beings from God. We must also affirm that people are saved by God’s grace through faith, not by their works (Eph 2:8–9). The Bible clearly teaches that people are saved from sin and reconciled to God when and because they believe in Jesus Christ (see Mark 1:15; Acts 3:19; 20:21; 16:31).[23]
Do Humans Have Free Will?
Adam Harwood, in his book Christian Theology: Biblical, Historical, and Systematic, calls this Non-Calvinist soteriology as the “whosoever will” model. In this view, “we affirm that God initiated salvation by sending Jesus Christ as the sacrifice for the sins of all people. God desires all people to be saved, and any person who hears the message of the Gospel can choose to believe in Christ and be saved. This view in no way implies that individuals can save themselves. Rather, God convicts all people of their sin and draws all people to the cross of Christ. Those who hear the message of the Gospel and freely respond in faith will be saved, but those who reject the offer of salvation can blame only themselves for their lost condition.”[24]
In “Grace, Faith, and Divine Sovereignty”, W. T. Purkiser, Richard S. Taylor, and Willard H. Taylor explained about the dynamics of God’s initiative and human response. They shared that God refuses to force humans against their will. Love works persuasively, but not coercively. For them, “Grace is not an irresistible and magical infusion but a divine activity that can be rejected by unbelief. Therefore, while salvation depends entirely upon God’s initiative, it is not imposed. Man must open the door of his heart.”[25]
In his sermon entitled “The Responsibility of Choice”, A.W. Tozer declared that “God will take nine steps toward us, but He will not take the tenth. He will incline us to repent, but He cannot do our repenting for us. It is of the essence of repentance that it can only be done by the one who committed the act to be repented of. God can wait on the sinning man… but He cannot force a man to repent. To do this would be to violate the man’s freedom and void the gift God originally bestowed upon him. Where there is no freedom of choice there can be neither sin nor righteousness, because it is of the nature of both that they be voluntary.”[26]
Leighton Flowers, in his book The Potter’s Promise: A Biblical Defense of Traditional Soteriology, encapsulates it very well: “No man will stand before the Father and be able to give the excuse, ‘I was born unloved by my Creator (John 3:16). I was born un-chosen and without the hope of salvation (Titus 2:11). I was born unable to see, hear or understand God’s revelation of Himself (Acts 28:27–28).’ No! They will stand wholly and completely “without excuse” (Rom. 1:20), because God loved them (John 3:16), called them to salvation (2 Cor. 5:20), revealed Himself to them (Titus 2:11), and provided the means by which their sins would be atoned (1 John 2:2). No man has any excuse for unbelief (Rom. 1:20).”
Dominic Ortega posted in Soteriology101 his thoughts on human depravity and spiritual deadness that brilliantly resonate with many Non-Calvinist Evangelicals:
Depravity means we are born with a propensity, tendency or inclination to sin since our nature has been affected (Ephesians 2:1–3; Galatians 5:17). Depravity means we cannot initiate, attain, or be the source of our own salvation (John 1:12–13), but we can receive it (John 3:16; 6:28–29).
Then being dead in sin means a total inability to achieve or obtain the solution to our sin by ourselves, not a total inability to accept it from God.
The lost man’s inability to seek God does not equal the inability to respond to a God who is actively seeking to save the lost. (Luke 19:10)
The lost man’s inability to save himself does not equal the inability to respond to God’s gracious and powerful appeal for all the lost to repent and believe. (Colossians 1:23, Acts 19:30)
The lost man’s inability to attain righteousness by pursuing it through works does not equal the inability to attain righteousness by pursuing it through faith. (Romans 9:30–32)
Note that I am not saying here that people have a natural capacity to come to faith and repentance without divine assistance. When revelation comes, when the Holy Spirit convicts of sin, when Jesus draws them through the preaching of the Gospel, people are free to accept or reject salvation.
To portray people as if they cannot respond (inability) by ascribing them to the literal physical dead is wrong. Spiritual deadness is a metaphor for separation from God, and is not an analogy parallel to being physically dead.[27]
In an article entitled “God: The Initiator of Salvation”, Jenai Rothnie also made a valid argument that, while it is God who started the salvation process, God also delights in allowing human response to the Gospel invitation. However, it does not necessarily mean that our salvation came from us:
God ‘initiates’ salvation by revealing the Savior and the offer of salvation to everyone, asking them only to believe, like a King both preparing a feast and sending out invitations asking people to come. For most people today, that invitation will be upon hearing the Gospel. Faith is our acceptance of that invite, our trust in the feast to come.
God then effectually grants the believer salvation — we die with Christ and rise by the power of the Spirit to new life in Christ, an entire process which is initiated by God, sustained by the power of the Spirit, and continues until the believer physically dies and is resurrected with a new spiritual body. At no point does man do any of the actual ‘saving’ part, whether by accepting the offer or continuing to abide in Christ and walk by the granted indwelling Spirit.
Just as the initiator of a group or rite might have conditions for the initiate to follow, so God has the requirement of faith to be inducted into His household, to be grantees of the Covenant, to receive a regenerate nature, and to be recipients of Christ’s deliverance. If a fallen human were capable of responding to the Gospel in faith, that would not logically make him the ‘initiator’ of salvation — it just makes him an ‘initiate’.[28]
It was Gregory Boyd, in his article “Love and Free Will”, who said that a preprogrammed lover is completely absurd and meaningless. Love can only be genuine if it’s freely chosen. Which means, unless a personal agent has the capacity to choose against love, they don’t really have the capacity to choose for it:
God could have easily created a world in which nothing evil could ever happen. But this world would not have been capable of love. God could have preprogrammed agents to say loving things and to act in loving ways. He could even have preprogrammed these automatons to believe they were choosing to love. But these preprogrammed agents would not genuinely be loving. Love can only be genuine if it’s freely chosen. Which means, unless a personal agent has the capacity to choose against love, they don’t really have the capacity to choose for it. In fact, the concept of a “preprogrammed lover” is completely meaningless… The reason God cannot create these is not that He lacks any power, but because it is self-contradictory. They’re equivalent to nothingness… So too, the reason God cannot create a “preprogrammed lover” is because the very idea of an agent who is capable of love but not capable of choosing against love is meaningless.[29]
If God’s primary purpose in creation is raising up a people who are capable of receiving and reflecting His love and carrying out His will “on earth as it is in heaven,” these people will have to have the potential to choose against love. The price of the possibility of love is freedom, and with freedom comes the possibility of evil.[30]
One of the strongest reasons we are Non-Calvinist is because of the truth that genuine love requires authentic freedom: “God could have created a world in which He precisely controlled and determined all things, including the choices of human beings. But we believe such a world would make true human love impossible. True human love requires libertarian freedom… In a nutshell, our case against Calvinism is that it doesn’t do justice to the character of the God revealed in Scripture. It does not accurately portray the holy One who is “compassionate and gracious, slow to anger, abounding in love” (Psalms 103:8), the God for whom love is not merely an option or a sovereign choice, but who is such that His eternal nature is love (1 John 4:8).”[31]
Robert Picirilli wrote a brilliant article entitled “Free Will Revisited: Fresh Perspective on an Ancient Debate” which was posted at the online page of the National Association of Free Will Baptists. He rules out as flawed any Calvinistic notion of strong divine determinism or compatibilism (soft determinism), and insists that in spite of human depravity, we still have libertarian free will as part of the image of God in humanity:
Free will is a way of saying a person is capable of making decisions, that a person can choose between two (or more) alternatives when he or she has obtained (by whatever means) the degree of understanding of those alternatives required to choose between them.
I intend for this definition to involve what has been traditionally stated as, “the power of alternative choice,” also sometimes called “libertarian freedom.” This means the choice or decision is one that really could go either way; that a person is neither compelled by some force outside nor shut up from within by previous condition or experience, so that only one alternative can actually be chosen.
I regard it as obvious that the ability of a person to will is part of what it means to bear the image of God, and that fallen humanity still bears that image, as 1 Corinthians 11:7 indicates. I offer, then, that the freedom of the human will is constitutional. One’s will is always present as an aspect of human nature, a way a person functions. Depravity does not change the fact that a person has a will, or that it is constitutionally free to make choices. To be sure, the circumstances in which the will functions bear on whether the person can choose this or that alternative, and that is where depravity gets involved. A person in prison, for example, has not lost the capacity to walk the streets unchained, but his circumstances curtail his ability to exercise that capacity at the time.
Just so, depravity limits our choices without removing the constitutional capacity to choose. How, then, can a fallen person ever be free to choose for God? This requires a deeper study of free will, depravity, and grace. For now, it is enough to say — and this is the point of the latter part of my definition, above — such a person must obtain a level of understanding of the choices available.
To believe in the freedom of the will as I have defined it, then, applies to choices of any sort. These choices include everyday decisions that seem entirely innocent and unimportant, like which socks to wear today (almost, but not quite, inconsequential), or the restaurant to which you will take your wife for your anniversary celebration (very consequential). They also include much more important moral choices: whether to lie to avoid a predicament, or whether to retaliate when wronged. And they include the ultimate choice that leads to eternal life: putting faith in Jesus Christ. But in all of these, there must at least be some understanding of the available choices to be free to choose in the circumstances.[32]
Non-Calvinist Evangelical Christians are fellow born again believers from various theological persuasions which include Provisionists, Molinists, Free Grace, Arminians, Freewill Baptists, General Baptists, Wesleyans, Lutherans, Pentecostals, Methodists, Mennonite, Brethren, Nazarene, Evangelical Free, Anabaptists, Anglican, and all believers who embrace “Whosoever Will” theologies.
𝗚𝗿𝗮𝗰𝗲 𝗳𝗼𝗿 𝗔𝗹𝗹 𝗖𝗼𝗮𝗹𝗶𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻 is a cross-denominational collaboration of various Evangelical Christian pastors, theologians, scholars, church leaders, and believers from all theological stripes who affirm and teach that God has provided the means of salvation for all people through the life, death, and resurrection of the Son of God. So that all who trust in Jesus Christ are saved by grace through faith. We believe that the Gospel (εὐαγγέλιον) is asserting that God actually loves the entire world and that God sincerely desires every person to gain eternal life through Jesus Christ. God offers the free gift of salvation to all sinners and invites all humanity to respond in believing faith. The saving grace of God is sincerely offered to every person, not decreed to a preselected few. We desire to be a theological voice against teachings that limit the saving grace of God only to a chosen few, against theologies that teach that Christ did not die for all of humanity, and against doctrines that say that the Gospel is actually good news only to preselected individuals, not for every person.
We subscribe to the theological convictions of the 𝗔𝗽𝗼𝘀𝘁𝗹𝗲𝘀’ 𝗖𝗿𝗲𝗲𝗱, the 𝗡𝗶𝗰𝗲𝗻𝗲 𝗖𝗿𝗲𝗲𝗱, the 𝗟𝗮𝘂𝘀𝗮𝗻𝗻𝗲 𝗖𝗼𝘃𝗲𝗻𝗮𝗻𝘁, and the 𝗪𝗼𝗿𝗹𝗱 𝗘𝘃𝗮𝗻𝗴𝗲𝗹𝗶𝗰𝗮𝗹 𝗔𝗹𝗹𝗶𝗮𝗻𝗰𝗲.
[1] Adam Harwood, Christian Theology: Biblical, Historical, and Systematic, (Bellingham, WA: Lexham Academic, 2022), 464.
[2] Harwood, Christian Theology, 464.
[3] Article 3 from the section titled, “The Third and Fourth Main Points of Doctrine: Human Corruption, Conversion to God, and the Way It Occurs”, Canons of the Synod of Dort, 1618, 19, in Creeds and Confessions, 2: 584, as quoted in Harwood, Christian Theology, 500.
[4] James Montgomery Boice and Philip Graham Ryken, The Doctrines of Grace: Rediscovering the Evangelical Gospel (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2009), 30.
[5] Within the Non-Calvinist camp, there are at least two nuanced views on how God allows sinners to respond in faith. The first view is the Arminian view — which says that God’s work of grace (prevenient grace) for all people is needed to enable any sinner to freely choose to respond in faith to the Gospel message. The second view is the Provisionist view — which says that the Gospel message itself is God’s work of grace so that when it is preached to all people, any sinner can freely choose to respond in faith. The proclamation of the Gospel is powerfully sufficient enough to bring salvation to those who will believe. While the Arminian and the Provisionist each have a different take on why all humans can respond to God’s offer, these two views both affirm the importance of God’s initiative of grace to invite all sinners to salvation.
[6] Harwood, Christian Theology, 501.
[7] David Hunt, What Love Is This?: Calvinism’s Misrepresentation of God, (Bend, OR: The Berean Call, 2013), 63–63.
[8] W.R. White, Baptist Distinctives (Sunday School Board, SBC, 1946), 24–25.
[9] Augustus H. Strong, Systematic Theology (Judson Press, 1907), 640.
[10] W.H. Griffith Thomas, The Principles of Theology (Longmans, Green and Co., 1930), 165, 180.
[11] William L. Pettingill, Bible Questions Answered (Just A Word Inc., 3rd ed. 1935), 374.
[12] Hunt, What Love Is This?: Calvinism’s Misrepresentation of God, 74.
[13] Harwood, Christian Theology, 501.
[14] Harwood, Christian Theology, 501
[15] Harwood, Christian Theology, 502.
[16] Harwood, Christian Theology, 502.
[17] Henry Thiessen, Introductory Lectures in Systematic Theology (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1949), 349, as quoted in Harwood, Christian Theology, 502.
[18] William Lane Craig, “If We’re Dead in Our Sin, How Can We Respond to God?” in Reasonable Faith, video lecture at YouTube Channel https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gCgfEIyr_OI&t=1s
[19] See the New Hampshire Confession Faith, Article 6, “Of the Freeness of Salvation”, in Baptist Confessions of Faith, ed. William L. Lumpkin (Valley Forge, PA: Judson, 1978), 363, as quoted in Harwood, Christian Theology, 502.
[20] “Born Dead?” in Soteriology101, article online https://soteriology101.com/2018/04/13/born-dead/ accessed September 20, 2024.
[21] Leighton Flowers, God’s Provision For All: A Defense of God’s Goodness (San Antonio, TX: Trinity Academic Press, 2019), 53.
[22] Steve Lemke, Whosoever Will: A Biblical-Theological Critique of Five-Point Calvinism, (Nashville, TN: B&H Publishing Group, 2010), 159.
[23] Harwood, Christian Theology, 503.
[24] Harwood, Christian Theology, 503.
[25] W. T. Purkiser, Richard S. Taylor, and Willard H. Taylor, “Grace, Faith, and Divine Sovereignty”, in God, Man, and Salvation: A Biblical Theology, (Kansas City: Beacon Hill, 1977) https://www.bibleviews.com/initiate.html accessed September 20, 2024.
[26] A.W. Tozer, “The Responsibility of Choice”, in oChristianArticles.Com article online: http://articles.ochristian.com/article5099.shtml. accessed September 20, 2024.
[27] Dominic Ortega, “Depravity Not Inability”, posted in Soteriology101 online social media https://www.facebook.com/soteriology101 posted last February 3, 2020. accessed September 20, 2024.
[28] Jenai Rothnie, “God: The Initiator of Salvation” edited by Eric Kemp in Soteriology101 online article https://soteriology101.com/2019/05/21/god-the-initiator-of-salvation/comment-page-1/ accessed September 20, 2024.
[29] Gregory Boyd, “Love and Free Will”, in ReKnew.Org article online: https://reknew.org/2016/02/love-and-free-will/ accessed September 20, 2024.
[30] Boyd, “Love and Free Will”.
[31] Jerry Walls and Joseph Dongell, Why I Am Not a Calvinist, (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2004), 131.
[32] Robert Picirilli, “Free Will Revisited: Fresh Perspective on an Ancient Debate”, in National Association of Free Will Baptists, article online: https://nafwb.org/site/free-will-revisited/ accessed September 20, 2024.
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