INTERVIEW TRANSCRIPT
AUTHORTALK® HOST: RONALD WAY
AUTHOR: JERRY WALLS
BOOK: Does God Love Everyone? The Heart of What is Wrong with Calvinism
Host
Ron Way:
Hello, everyone. My name is Ron Way, and I'm going to be your host here today on Author Talk on the Rising Light Media sites. I'm going to be interviewing the author of a brand new book entitled, Does God Love Everyone? The Heart of What is Wrong with Calvinism. His name is Dr. Jerry Walls. Many of you have been asking me to interview a traditional Christian author, so that's exactly what I'm going to do today. Jerry Walls is a scholar in residence and professor of philosophy at Houston Baptist University. Before he took this post, he was a visiting scholar, and then adjunct professor at the University of Notre Dame, a Catholic university. Just to mention some of his accomplishments, he received his master of divinity from Princeton Seminary, then Yale Divinity School, finished with a PhD at Notre Dame in 1989.
I have a soft spot ... I went to University of Southern California, but I have a soft spot for Notre Dame, because I got invited to interview to be the dean of the school of architecture. Go figure. That was a long time ago.
Jerry:
Wow. At Notre Dame?
Ron:
Yes, at Notre Dame.
Jerry:
Wow, I'm impressed.
Ron:
Well, don't be too impressed. I didn't get the job.
Jerry:
Still, I'm still impressed that you even got considered. I'm impressed.
Ron:
Well, I was impressed with you. Welcome to Author Talk, Dr. Jerry Walls. It's a pleasure to have you introducing your book on my show.
Jerry:
My privilege. I'm delighted to do so.
Ron:
I'm going to quote from your book cover summary here, doctor.
"Does God truly love all persons? Most Christians think the obvious answer to this question is, 'Yes, of course he does.' Indeed, many Christians would agree that the very heart of the gospel is that God so loved the world that he gives his son to make salvation available for every single person." Then you go on to say that one of the most popular and resurgent theological movements in the contemporary evangelical church, namely Calvinism, cannot be coherently and consistently confirm that vital claim about the love of God. With that said, Jerry, I have to admit to you that, as an Episcopalian, we were taught nothing about Calvin, nor Calvinism. It evidently was not an issue in our church, so for my own edification, and the same for our audience, please take a giant step backwards to the reformation. Give us a history lesson so that we can better understand Calvinism, and where it fits into the breakaway of Lutheranism and then Calvinism from the Catholic Church in Europe.
Jerry:
The reformation, which we'll be celebrating the anniversary of here in a week or so, and actually next year is the 500th anniversary of the reformation, which is quite an epochal event. The protestant reformation is that, in many ways unfortunate, but still I think necessary split in the western church when a number of people recognized the deep corruption that was prevalent in the Roman Catholic Church in terms of financial abuse, spiritual laxity, and so on. Martin Luther, in particular, challenged the sale of indulgences, which was kind of like the equivalent of TV preachers today huckstering for money in very dubious ways, playing on people's emotions, playing on their fears.
Like I said, these guys that sold indulgences, they could do any TV preacher proud today. Luther protested that (among other things), but the deeper issue was really a doctrine of salvation. He really felt that the Roman Catholic Church at that time had really lost sight of some crucial truths of the faith, particularly justification by faith, and John Calvin was another fellow reformer, along with a number of others, but the bottom line is, these guys had a distinctive soteriology, Calvin did, in terms of the doctrine of predestination. We can talk more about that, if you like, but they were recovering what they believed to be Augustinian classic Christianity that had been obscured by a lot of the abuses in the Roman Church at the time.
Ron:
How did they differ from the Lutherans? Were the Lutherans just primarily concerned about the Catholic Church selling absolutions, or was there deeper difference between the Lutherans and the Calvinists?
Jerry:
The Lutherans and the Calvinists differed over the nature of the Lord's supper, for instance, but when it came to the doctrine of justification by faith, they were pretty similar on that score, and in fact Luther himself was a predestinarian very similar to Calvin, so a lot of people don't recognize that, but Luther was as much a double predestinarian, unconditional predestinarian person as Calvin was, on that score.
Ron:
Actually the two theologies developed as separate churches. Did they begin to attract their own followings? How did it get to America?
Jerry:
It certainly did, and in various places. France, Calvin was active in France. Luther was active in Germany. The English reformation later followed not too long after that, a less radical sort of reformation, but still very much a protestant reformation in the Church of England. You mentioned you're an Episcopalian. It came to America probably with the puritans who were very much Calvinists of the English variety. They were some of the earliest Americans here, and so Calvinist theology was very prevalent in New England in the very earliest days of America. It's got deep American roots.
Jonathan Edwards, one of the greatest theologians in America's history, president of Princeton University, he was a notable Calvinist, so it was very much part of the American experience very early on. Calvinism has deep roots in terms of American history.
Ron:
All right. Help me out here. Are there certain denominations that we would recognize today as Calvinist, and some of the major denominations that we are not? Give us some examples. Who would we look to for that? I'm not an Evangelical Christian, as I mentioned. I'm an Episcopalian, which I was always taught was just a better-dressed Catholic.
Jerry:
[Laughter] Yeah, well, the interesting thing is, there's definitely some Calvinism within the Anglican Church. Going clear back to the days of John Wesley and George Whitfield, both of them were Anglican ministers, and Wesley was not a Calvinist, George Whitfield was. Anglicanism, which is the mother church of the American Episcopal Church, or course, has definitely got a strong Calvinistic stream within its history.
Now, historically speaking, Presbyterians were Calvinists, so their official doctrinal statements, the Westminster Confession, is explicitly Calvinistic. Now, a lot of Presbyterians today are pretty liberal, not particularly Evangelical, not particularly serious about their Calvinism, but that at least is their roots. Some Presbyterians, the more conservative ones, like the Orthodox Presbyterian Church, the Presbyterian Church of America is another one, they are much more serious about their Calvinism.
Another place where Calvinism is flourishing today is actually in the Southern Baptist Convention. Now, the Southern Baptist Convention is very much divided on this score, so certainly not all Southern Baptists are Calvinists by any stretch of the imagination. There's a very vocal and significant group of Calvinists within the Southern Baptist Convention, so if you want to look at where it's really aggressively being promoted, some of the Baptist circles of today would be one of the most obvious places.
Now, denominations that are not Calvinist, the Methodist tradition, as I mentioned a moment ago, which was founded by John Wesley, and Anglican. Most Pentecostals are not Anglican, obviously. Let's see ... Most Roman Catholics are not. Most Episcopalians are not, although, like I say, there certainly are Calvinists in the Anglican tradition. Those would, broadly speaking, be some of the places you're going to find the differences.
Ron:
I wanted to mention something that I found interesting. Last weekend my grandson, one of my grandsons, visited my wife and I here in Arizona on his way up to camp in the Grand Tetons in Wyoming. He saw that I was reading ...
Jerry:
I was just there last summer.
Ron:
Really? My gosh, I think that it is the most beautiful place on earth.
Jerry:
Fabulously gorgeous, isn't it? The canyon there is really extraordinary.
Ron:
I'm lucky enough to have a daughter who married a rancher whose family owns a Montana and Wyoming ranch, so we get to get up there, and that's really lovely. We love that place.
Anyway, here's this 18-year-old kid who just got out of high school, and he saw I was reading your book, and he proceeded to tell me about Calvinism.
Jerry:
An 18-year-old kid? Really?
Ron:
Their church ...
Jerry:
Calvinism has made extraordinary ... It might not be quite as vocal now as it was, but Calvinism has had quite a large following among college and even high school students. I did a debate on it several years ago when I wrote another book called, Why I'm Not a Calvinist, with Joe Dongell. We had a debate Friday night in a church, and a lot of people said, "You might get 50 eggheads to come out for that." We had 967 people come for this debate, which lasted three hours, and the overwhelming number of the people there were college, seminary, and even high school students. Most of them stayed the entire three hours, and then stayed and asked us questions until midnight when they finally shut the building down. The interest was incredible, so yeah, there's a book called, The Young, The Restless, The Reformed. It was written several years ago, that documents that story about how prevalent Calvinism is among the younger generation. All that to say, back to your 18-year-old ...
Ron:
It's just fascinating to me that it must be an issue in the church, because if the teenagers are talking about it, like you said, that's amazing.
Jerry:
Yeah, it's often the case that the academics really have very little awareness about what's actually going on on the ground in the church. When I wrote the Calvinism book years ago, I remember some of my academic friends said, "Aren't you beating a dead horse?" I thought, "Gee, you're not paying attention to what's going on in the pews, man. This stuff is alive and well and being talked about everywhere."
Ron:
Can I tell you ...
Jerry:
Maybe not at the American Academy of Religion, but if you actually are paying attention to what's going on in the church, it's quite prevalent.
Ron:
I'll tell you, there's something going on in the world with the youth. Just as an aside, if you don't mind. I just took a look at the statistics on our AuthorTalk show, and on Facebook, that goes out every time we publish another interview or a blog, and it's an amazing, amazing thing because we now, as I mentioned, we had over 102,000 that actually read the Facebook and then come to the website, which you're going to be on. When we did the demographics today, we found out that 30%+ are kids that are 18 and below.
Jerry:
Wow.
Ron:
30% are 35-18, so over 65% of our listeners ...
Jerry:
Are 35 and under.
Ron:
Yes, sir.
Jerry:
Wow. That's remarkable. That's actually quite exciting because you sometimes hear people saying, "This generation is all about experience, and all about all that kind of stuff, and has no interest in academic, intellectual arguments." That would suggest that there's quite a large interest, wouldn't it?
Ron:
It sure would, and that makes me very, very happy indeed.
Jerry:
Yeah, I'm delighted to hear that too.
Ron:
Now, let's get back to your book. That's why we're here. [Laughter] In your introduction, you say that the Calvinists believe that there is an Elect, with capital letter, Elect, among mankind that God has pre-ordained—some souls and not others. They alone will be saved. If I understand you, and you can correct me, that can or will include people that are not even Christians. Before we get into the denominations and if they differ in this relationship, tell us about the Elect.
Jerry:
Actually, the Elect is not only a Calvinistic doctrine. It is a biblical doctrine, and in fact that's one of the common misconceptions is that Calvinists believe in election, predestination, divine sovereignty, and Armenians don't. No, as a matter of fact, Armenians also believe in election, predestination, divine sovereignty, just not the Calvinist variation of it.
The distinctive claim of the Calvinist is that God unconditionally chooses to save some persons, so one of the famous lines in the famous Calvinist TULIP (Total depravity, Unconditional election, Limited atonement, Irresistible grace, Perseverance of the saints) is this idea of unconditional election, that God chooses out of the mass of fallen mankind, he chooses unconditionally to give some persons saving faith, and he chooses to leave the rest of them in their sins, and thereby leave them to utter ultimate damnation. It's the notion that God simply unconditionally chooses some, and those that are unconditionally chosen will be given irresistible grace, they will be saved. Those that are not chosen cannot possibly be saved, because they're passed over and left in their sins, and without God's grace, they can't do anything but sin. The mass of mankind, according to traditional Calvinism, has been left in their sins, and inevitably will continue thereby, and end up with eternal damnation. That's what's so offensive about the doctrine.
Ron:
I personally agree, but that's me personally, and I try to get what you believe, not what I believe.
Jerry:
Well, you're right.
Ron:
Let me see if I understand. Help me out here. In simplistic terms, for my poor brain, that means that when God makes the call for those that are saved, and those that aren't, he picks anyone, and they might or might not be Christians at the time, and if I understood your book correctly, then to use not your term but mine, the scales will fall from their eyes, they will see the error of their ways, and then it's pre-ordained that God will choose them. Maybe you can explain this better.
Jerry:
The idea is, everybody that's Elect is elected from a condition of total depravity and inability. They're dead in their trespasses and sins ...
Ron:
Whether they're Christians or not?
Jerry:
Alienated completely from God. God chooses out of some of those people to give them irresistible grace. Now, once he gives them irresistible grace, they will come to Christ, they will accept him, they will exercise faith in him, and they will moreover persevere until the end, until they're finally and ultimately saved.
Yes, if you are one of the elect, you will have faith, you will exercise faith, God will give you faith, he will give you the gift of faith. If you are not one of the unconditionally chosen who receives irresistible grace, you can't exercise faith. It's simply impossible for you. You're either unconditionally elected and given irresistible grace, and that will give you the ability to have faith. You will have faith, and you will persevere in your faith. If you're not one of the elect, you can't exercise faith. You can't possibly believe in Christ. You can't possibly do anything other than sin and continue in your rebellion.
Ron:
Then, Jerry, to the end of your book, because you totally disagree with this, so let's move forward. Tell me why you disagree and how.
Jerry:
Well, the short answer is the subtitle of the book is "The Heart of What's Wrong with Calvinism" and the main title is "Does God Love Everyone?" The Calvinist answer is no. At least, if you're consistent. Some Calvinists just outright, forthrightly say, "No, God does not love everyone." Some Calvinists try to say, "Yes, we think God loves everyone, but not in the saving sense.
D. A. Carson, who's a noted Calvinist and New Testament scholar says, "God loves everybody in the sense that the rain falls on the just and the unjust. Everybody has air to breath, food to eat, water on their garden. Everybody is invited to accept Christ." Now, if you're not Elect, you can't respond to the invitation. If you're not Elect, you can't be grateful for those natural gifts of food, air, water, et cetera. All love means, for the Calvinist is God gives people temporal blessings, even for those that are not Elect. Some Calvinists equivocate when they say that God loves everyone by defining love in that kind of a way.
The heart of the problem is just this: There's no meaningful sense in which Calvinists can say God loves everyone, because again, many people, in fact if not the vast majority of people he has simply chosen not to give irresistible grace, he has chosen to pass over them, to leave them in their sin, so he could, at least so far as freedom is concerned, he could determine everybody to respond to Christ and be saved, at least so far as freedom is concerned. Freedom is ... The traditional reason why people are lost, or at least the reason they remain, and most Christians would say people are lost, is because they freely reject Christ, they freely persist in their sins, they freely persist in evil, and will not accept God, they will not allow the love of God into their lives. Well, the Calvinist says God can give anybody he wants irresistible grace. He could give everybody grace that would move them, determine them, cause them to come to Christ but chooses not to do so.
What I'm saying is, if this is what ... If this is the case, there's no meaningful sense in which God loves everybody. That's the heart of the problem, and if God doesn't truly love everyone, he's not a truly good being, he's not a God of perfect love, he's not a God of perfect goodness. The problem of Calvinism is the way it depicts the character of God. It makes him fall far short of the biblical view of a God whose heart is love, who desires the salvation of all of his children.
Ron:
In your church tradition that you come from, and faith, this saving grace of God is still limited, isn't it? It's still conditional on whether or not a person accepts Christ as their personal savior. All the others are still going to hell, am I right?
Jerry:
Right, but here's the big difference. The view that I hold is that God sincerely desires to save all persons. He enables all persons to be saved. He truly prefers them to respond to his grace, and accept his grace, but here's the point, a genuine relationship of love and trust cannot be caused by God. Not even God can do that. If he gives us genuine freedom, and genuine freedom is the necessary condition for genuine love, genuine faith, genuine worship, genuine relationship. Given that is the case, necessarily if we choose not to trust, not to love, then we separate ourselves from God, and choose not to receive the good that God offers us and gives us. God enables all persons to respond, desires all persons to respond, but by nature, given the fact that we are truly free human beings that God calls us to be in a relationship with him, we can decline that. If persons are lost, it is because they will not accept the grace and love that God sincerely, genuinely extends to them.
It's a tough question any way you look at it to explain why some people are lost. I mean, it's not an easy problem for either side, but the view that I defend, and I think the Bible clearly teaches, and which I think most Christians hold, is that God sincerely loves all persons, he sincerely offers all, gives every person every chance to respond, and only those who persist in refusing God, and I've written a book about Hell called "Hell, the Logic of Damnation," and just another one recently called, "Heaven, Hell, and Purgatory." I have defended the doctrine of hell against some of the challenges mounted to it. Again, it's a difficult doctrine on either side, but it's a horrible doctrine if God unconditionally chooses to pass over people so that they cannot do anything but sin, and inevitable end up damned. That simply makes shambles of any notion of God's love and perfect goodness.
Ron:
What about Christians who would say that if you seek God with an open heart, whether through Christ or not, whether you're a Buddhist, or Hindu, or Muslim, or Taoist, you find the presence of the Divine? It's my guess that you'd say that they're not Christians, and they'll all be condemned. Is that true?
Jerry:
That is not in fact what I would say.
Ron:
Good.
Jerry:
Again, I've written about this in my books on hell. I believe God desires the salvation of all persons. I believe Christ died for all persons. They may not know about Christ. They may not know who he is, but he knows who they are, and they may not know that he died for them, but he did anyway. Many persons have not heard the gospel of Christ, but they're still responding to whatever light, or understanding, or grace that they have, and so the point of the matter is this, I believe that God is drawing every single person to himself, using whatever resources are available in terms of light and revelation that they have. If persons are responding to the light that they have, I think they will ultimately come to see the truth in Christ.
Again, there's only one God, according to Christian theology. It's the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, so ultimate salvation requires us to acknowledge the truth about God, that he is the trinity, that Jesus is his son, but many people don't have access to that truth in this life, and so what I believe is that God will give every person every opportunity, even if that includes postmortem opportunities for repentance and salvation. I don't think people are condemned for not believing a truth to which they've not had access. If people are responding to the truth that is available to them, if they're sincerely responding to the grace of God ... Again, I'm not saying this is a matter of works, but I believe God's grace is at work drawing all persons, and I believe Jesus died for all persons, again, whether they know it or not, and so grace is extended to all persons, and I think there are a lot of people who are responding to Christ, who are coming to Christ even though they may not be aware of it until maybe after their death.
Ron:
Jerry, I hate to do this to you. Do you know that we're already 42 seconds over?
Jerry:
Wow!
Ron:
I told you it would go fast, didn't I?
Listen, folks, the author is Dr. Jerry L. Walls, and I guess you use the L. Because there must be another Jerry Walls out there. The book is entitled, Does God Love Everyone? The Heart of What's Wrong with Calvinism.
If you belong to an Evangelical church, whether or not it's from the Calvin tradition or not, you should buy this book and test your knowledge and your faith. Simply click on the cover of the book on the AuthorTalk website. It will take you directly to Amazon Books, where you can buy a paperback or an e-book on Kindle.
I want to just say thank you so much, Jerry, for being on our show.
Jerry:
My pleasure. I enjoyed it.
Ron:
I certainly appreciate it, and it was great fun, and far too short. Folks, just get into the book. It's not a hard read. You can see that I got excited about this, otherwise I wouldn't be so interested in what he's saying. He's a great author so I want you to go get the book. Join us all.
Thank you again, Jerry, for spending your afternoon with us.
That's it, folks. I hope that you enjoyed that conversation with Dr. Jerry Walls like I did. He's a fascinating guy, and I must say he moved the peg a little for me, and I was very glad that he did so, because here's where I come from folks. The world that is encompassed in enclosed Christianity for the past 2000 years has been very insular, but all of that has changed with the advent of computers, Facebook, Twitter, et cetera, television, for goodness sake. We've become exposed to many people from many lands with many religious faiths.
For all this time, since Jesus, most Christians in the world knew very little about God and Jesus except what their local church told them. They probably knew that there were people in other lands, but other faiths were probably more of an abstract idea than a direct knowledge. Their priest or pastor told them that they were all going to hell, the other faiths. Most of them knew the people in their village, or their county, maybe even their country, but they never came in contact with a Buddhist of Japan, Taoist from China, Muslims in the Arab world, nor Hindus from India. It was easy to believe the teachings of the church, that they indeed were saved themselves, but the heathens, all of those other faiths, were all going to hell for eternity, but that's not so easy today.
The world is very small now. Almost all of us know Christians that are not so nice, that sin like crazy for six days, but they're supposedly saved on the seventh because they accept Jesus Christ as their savior. I'm sure that most of us know people that exhibit the reverse: people that love God with all their hearts, with all their souls, with all their strength, and with all their minds, and secondarily, they love thy neighbor as themselves. Many of them are not Christians, but are of different faiths, and different traditions. I know that by Elect, the Calvinists didn't think that God would reach down on judgement day, and actually save a Buddhist or a Hindu and declare them holy just as they were, but they did believe that he would at the last moment remove the scales from these non-Christians eyes, and then they would see that Jesus was the only way and would want to give up their faith at the last minute, and be saved as a Christian. But what of the billions of others for whom Christianity made no sense at all, or had a different idea of what Christianity was that differed from our Calvinist friends?
As I pondered all of these things, however, I begin to wonder if the Calvinists weren't accidentally and partially right in the end. I prefer to believe that their meagre definition of those that God might reach down and save might be far larger and more accepting of everyone that they thought—no matter their faith—than they intended. God's definition might indeed be far more inclusive that our small definitions allow; and our limited understanding, as we mere humans frantically tried to put fences and walls around God's love, was indeed underestimating God’s love for mankind.
I was happy to hear that Dr. Jerry Walls said that he thinks that good people of all faiths might still be saved. That's a wonderful thing, and I appreciated that. I choose to believe that this is what Jesus meant when he taught so long ago that we're all God's children, no matter our tradition or faith, when he was asked, "What is the most important thing about his teaching?" He said, "Love the Lord thy God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength, and with all your mind, and secondly love your neighbor as yourself."
May all of you be blessed this day. Give love, and let God take care of the rest. For now, this is your humble host saying farewell until we meet again in another week's time. I hope that you join our ever-growing group that seeks God with all our might by filling out the pop-up window on our website and joining our ever-growing mailing list. We don't bug you. We will just let you know each time we post another interview or write a new blog.
In the meantime, join Author Talk on Facebook every day, and add your comments to our family of people that are earnest in our desire to become One with God. That's a great way to end this day. God bless.
AUTHORTALK® HOST: RONALD WAY
AUTHOR: JERRY WALLS
BOOK: Does God Love Everyone? The Heart of What is Wrong with Calvinism
Host
Ron Way:
Hello, everyone. My name is Ron Way, and I'm going to be your host here today on Author Talk on the Rising Light Media sites. I'm going to be interviewing the author of a brand new book entitled, Does God Love Everyone? The Heart of What is Wrong with Calvinism. His name is Dr. Jerry Walls. Many of you have been asking me to interview a traditional Christian author, so that's exactly what I'm going to do today. Jerry Walls is a scholar in residence and professor of philosophy at Houston Baptist University. Before he took this post, he was a visiting scholar, and then adjunct professor at the University of Notre Dame, a Catholic university. Just to mention some of his accomplishments, he received his master of divinity from Princeton Seminary, then Yale Divinity School, finished with a PhD at Notre Dame in 1989.
I have a soft spot ... I went to University of Southern California, but I have a soft spot for Notre Dame, because I got invited to interview to be the dean of the school of architecture. Go figure. That was a long time ago.
Jerry:
Wow. At Notre Dame?
Ron:
Yes, at Notre Dame.
Jerry:
Wow, I'm impressed.
Ron:
Well, don't be too impressed. I didn't get the job.
Jerry:
Still, I'm still impressed that you even got considered. I'm impressed.
Ron:
Well, I was impressed with you. Welcome to Author Talk, Dr. Jerry Walls. It's a pleasure to have you introducing your book on my show.
Jerry:
My privilege. I'm delighted to do so.
Ron:
I'm going to quote from your book cover summary here, doctor.
"Does God truly love all persons? Most Christians think the obvious answer to this question is, 'Yes, of course he does.' Indeed, many Christians would agree that the very heart of the gospel is that God so loved the world that he gives his son to make salvation available for every single person." Then you go on to say that one of the most popular and resurgent theological movements in the contemporary evangelical church, namely Calvinism, cannot be coherently and consistently confirm that vital claim about the love of God. With that said, Jerry, I have to admit to you that, as an Episcopalian, we were taught nothing about Calvin, nor Calvinism. It evidently was not an issue in our church, so for my own edification, and the same for our audience, please take a giant step backwards to the reformation. Give us a history lesson so that we can better understand Calvinism, and where it fits into the breakaway of Lutheranism and then Calvinism from the Catholic Church in Europe.
Jerry:
The reformation, which we'll be celebrating the anniversary of here in a week or so, and actually next year is the 500th anniversary of the reformation, which is quite an epochal event. The protestant reformation is that, in many ways unfortunate, but still I think necessary split in the western church when a number of people recognized the deep corruption that was prevalent in the Roman Catholic Church in terms of financial abuse, spiritual laxity, and so on. Martin Luther, in particular, challenged the sale of indulgences, which was kind of like the equivalent of TV preachers today huckstering for money in very dubious ways, playing on people's emotions, playing on their fears.
Like I said, these guys that sold indulgences, they could do any TV preacher proud today. Luther protested that (among other things), but the deeper issue was really a doctrine of salvation. He really felt that the Roman Catholic Church at that time had really lost sight of some crucial truths of the faith, particularly justification by faith, and John Calvin was another fellow reformer, along with a number of others, but the bottom line is, these guys had a distinctive soteriology, Calvin did, in terms of the doctrine of predestination. We can talk more about that, if you like, but they were recovering what they believed to be Augustinian classic Christianity that had been obscured by a lot of the abuses in the Roman Church at the time.
Ron:
How did they differ from the Lutherans? Were the Lutherans just primarily concerned about the Catholic Church selling absolutions, or was there deeper difference between the Lutherans and the Calvinists?
Jerry:
The Lutherans and the Calvinists differed over the nature of the Lord's supper, for instance, but when it came to the doctrine of justification by faith, they were pretty similar on that score, and in fact Luther himself was a predestinarian very similar to Calvin, so a lot of people don't recognize that, but Luther was as much a double predestinarian, unconditional predestinarian person as Calvin was, on that score.
Ron:
Actually the two theologies developed as separate churches. Did they begin to attract their own followings? How did it get to America?
Jerry:
It certainly did, and in various places. France, Calvin was active in France. Luther was active in Germany. The English reformation later followed not too long after that, a less radical sort of reformation, but still very much a protestant reformation in the Church of England. You mentioned you're an Episcopalian. It came to America probably with the puritans who were very much Calvinists of the English variety. They were some of the earliest Americans here, and so Calvinist theology was very prevalent in New England in the very earliest days of America. It's got deep American roots.
Jonathan Edwards, one of the greatest theologians in America's history, president of Princeton University, he was a notable Calvinist, so it was very much part of the American experience very early on. Calvinism has deep roots in terms of American history.
Ron:
All right. Help me out here. Are there certain denominations that we would recognize today as Calvinist, and some of the major denominations that we are not? Give us some examples. Who would we look to for that? I'm not an Evangelical Christian, as I mentioned. I'm an Episcopalian, which I was always taught was just a better-dressed Catholic.
Jerry:
[Laughter] Yeah, well, the interesting thing is, there's definitely some Calvinism within the Anglican Church. Going clear back to the days of John Wesley and George Whitfield, both of them were Anglican ministers, and Wesley was not a Calvinist, George Whitfield was. Anglicanism, which is the mother church of the American Episcopal Church, or course, has definitely got a strong Calvinistic stream within its history.
Now, historically speaking, Presbyterians were Calvinists, so their official doctrinal statements, the Westminster Confession, is explicitly Calvinistic. Now, a lot of Presbyterians today are pretty liberal, not particularly Evangelical, not particularly serious about their Calvinism, but that at least is their roots. Some Presbyterians, the more conservative ones, like the Orthodox Presbyterian Church, the Presbyterian Church of America is another one, they are much more serious about their Calvinism.
Another place where Calvinism is flourishing today is actually in the Southern Baptist Convention. Now, the Southern Baptist Convention is very much divided on this score, so certainly not all Southern Baptists are Calvinists by any stretch of the imagination. There's a very vocal and significant group of Calvinists within the Southern Baptist Convention, so if you want to look at where it's really aggressively being promoted, some of the Baptist circles of today would be one of the most obvious places.
Now, denominations that are not Calvinist, the Methodist tradition, as I mentioned a moment ago, which was founded by John Wesley, and Anglican. Most Pentecostals are not Anglican, obviously. Let's see ... Most Roman Catholics are not. Most Episcopalians are not, although, like I say, there certainly are Calvinists in the Anglican tradition. Those would, broadly speaking, be some of the places you're going to find the differences.
Ron:
I wanted to mention something that I found interesting. Last weekend my grandson, one of my grandsons, visited my wife and I here in Arizona on his way up to camp in the Grand Tetons in Wyoming. He saw that I was reading ...
Jerry:
I was just there last summer.
Ron:
Really? My gosh, I think that it is the most beautiful place on earth.
Jerry:
Fabulously gorgeous, isn't it? The canyon there is really extraordinary.
Ron:
I'm lucky enough to have a daughter who married a rancher whose family owns a Montana and Wyoming ranch, so we get to get up there, and that's really lovely. We love that place.
Anyway, here's this 18-year-old kid who just got out of high school, and he saw I was reading your book, and he proceeded to tell me about Calvinism.
Jerry:
An 18-year-old kid? Really?
Ron:
Their church ...
Jerry:
Calvinism has made extraordinary ... It might not be quite as vocal now as it was, but Calvinism has had quite a large following among college and even high school students. I did a debate on it several years ago when I wrote another book called, Why I'm Not a Calvinist, with Joe Dongell. We had a debate Friday night in a church, and a lot of people said, "You might get 50 eggheads to come out for that." We had 967 people come for this debate, which lasted three hours, and the overwhelming number of the people there were college, seminary, and even high school students. Most of them stayed the entire three hours, and then stayed and asked us questions until midnight when they finally shut the building down. The interest was incredible, so yeah, there's a book called, The Young, The Restless, The Reformed. It was written several years ago, that documents that story about how prevalent Calvinism is among the younger generation. All that to say, back to your 18-year-old ...
Ron:
It's just fascinating to me that it must be an issue in the church, because if the teenagers are talking about it, like you said, that's amazing.
Jerry:
Yeah, it's often the case that the academics really have very little awareness about what's actually going on on the ground in the church. When I wrote the Calvinism book years ago, I remember some of my academic friends said, "Aren't you beating a dead horse?" I thought, "Gee, you're not paying attention to what's going on in the pews, man. This stuff is alive and well and being talked about everywhere."
Ron:
Can I tell you ...
Jerry:
Maybe not at the American Academy of Religion, but if you actually are paying attention to what's going on in the church, it's quite prevalent.
Ron:
I'll tell you, there's something going on in the world with the youth. Just as an aside, if you don't mind. I just took a look at the statistics on our AuthorTalk show, and on Facebook, that goes out every time we publish another interview or a blog, and it's an amazing, amazing thing because we now, as I mentioned, we had over 102,000 that actually read the Facebook and then come to the website, which you're going to be on. When we did the demographics today, we found out that 30%+ are kids that are 18 and below.
Jerry:
Wow.
Ron:
30% are 35-18, so over 65% of our listeners ...
Jerry:
Are 35 and under.
Ron:
Yes, sir.
Jerry:
Wow. That's remarkable. That's actually quite exciting because you sometimes hear people saying, "This generation is all about experience, and all about all that kind of stuff, and has no interest in academic, intellectual arguments." That would suggest that there's quite a large interest, wouldn't it?
Ron:
It sure would, and that makes me very, very happy indeed.
Jerry:
Yeah, I'm delighted to hear that too.
Ron:
Now, let's get back to your book. That's why we're here. [Laughter] In your introduction, you say that the Calvinists believe that there is an Elect, with capital letter, Elect, among mankind that God has pre-ordained—some souls and not others. They alone will be saved. If I understand you, and you can correct me, that can or will include people that are not even Christians. Before we get into the denominations and if they differ in this relationship, tell us about the Elect.
Jerry:
Actually, the Elect is not only a Calvinistic doctrine. It is a biblical doctrine, and in fact that's one of the common misconceptions is that Calvinists believe in election, predestination, divine sovereignty, and Armenians don't. No, as a matter of fact, Armenians also believe in election, predestination, divine sovereignty, just not the Calvinist variation of it.
The distinctive claim of the Calvinist is that God unconditionally chooses to save some persons, so one of the famous lines in the famous Calvinist TULIP (Total depravity, Unconditional election, Limited atonement, Irresistible grace, Perseverance of the saints) is this idea of unconditional election, that God chooses out of the mass of fallen mankind, he chooses unconditionally to give some persons saving faith, and he chooses to leave the rest of them in their sins, and thereby leave them to utter ultimate damnation. It's the notion that God simply unconditionally chooses some, and those that are unconditionally chosen will be given irresistible grace, they will be saved. Those that are not chosen cannot possibly be saved, because they're passed over and left in their sins, and without God's grace, they can't do anything but sin. The mass of mankind, according to traditional Calvinism, has been left in their sins, and inevitably will continue thereby, and end up with eternal damnation. That's what's so offensive about the doctrine.
Ron:
I personally agree, but that's me personally, and I try to get what you believe, not what I believe.
Jerry:
Well, you're right.
Ron:
Let me see if I understand. Help me out here. In simplistic terms, for my poor brain, that means that when God makes the call for those that are saved, and those that aren't, he picks anyone, and they might or might not be Christians at the time, and if I understood your book correctly, then to use not your term but mine, the scales will fall from their eyes, they will see the error of their ways, and then it's pre-ordained that God will choose them. Maybe you can explain this better.
Jerry:
The idea is, everybody that's Elect is elected from a condition of total depravity and inability. They're dead in their trespasses and sins ...
Ron:
Whether they're Christians or not?
Jerry:
Alienated completely from God. God chooses out of some of those people to give them irresistible grace. Now, once he gives them irresistible grace, they will come to Christ, they will accept him, they will exercise faith in him, and they will moreover persevere until the end, until they're finally and ultimately saved.
Yes, if you are one of the elect, you will have faith, you will exercise faith, God will give you faith, he will give you the gift of faith. If you are not one of the unconditionally chosen who receives irresistible grace, you can't exercise faith. It's simply impossible for you. You're either unconditionally elected and given irresistible grace, and that will give you the ability to have faith. You will have faith, and you will persevere in your faith. If you're not one of the elect, you can't exercise faith. You can't possibly believe in Christ. You can't possibly do anything other than sin and continue in your rebellion.
Ron:
Then, Jerry, to the end of your book, because you totally disagree with this, so let's move forward. Tell me why you disagree and how.
Jerry:
Well, the short answer is the subtitle of the book is "The Heart of What's Wrong with Calvinism" and the main title is "Does God Love Everyone?" The Calvinist answer is no. At least, if you're consistent. Some Calvinists just outright, forthrightly say, "No, God does not love everyone." Some Calvinists try to say, "Yes, we think God loves everyone, but not in the saving sense.
D. A. Carson, who's a noted Calvinist and New Testament scholar says, "God loves everybody in the sense that the rain falls on the just and the unjust. Everybody has air to breath, food to eat, water on their garden. Everybody is invited to accept Christ." Now, if you're not Elect, you can't respond to the invitation. If you're not Elect, you can't be grateful for those natural gifts of food, air, water, et cetera. All love means, for the Calvinist is God gives people temporal blessings, even for those that are not Elect. Some Calvinists equivocate when they say that God loves everyone by defining love in that kind of a way.
The heart of the problem is just this: There's no meaningful sense in which Calvinists can say God loves everyone, because again, many people, in fact if not the vast majority of people he has simply chosen not to give irresistible grace, he has chosen to pass over them, to leave them in their sin, so he could, at least so far as freedom is concerned, he could determine everybody to respond to Christ and be saved, at least so far as freedom is concerned. Freedom is ... The traditional reason why people are lost, or at least the reason they remain, and most Christians would say people are lost, is because they freely reject Christ, they freely persist in their sins, they freely persist in evil, and will not accept God, they will not allow the love of God into their lives. Well, the Calvinist says God can give anybody he wants irresistible grace. He could give everybody grace that would move them, determine them, cause them to come to Christ but chooses not to do so.
What I'm saying is, if this is what ... If this is the case, there's no meaningful sense in which God loves everybody. That's the heart of the problem, and if God doesn't truly love everyone, he's not a truly good being, he's not a God of perfect love, he's not a God of perfect goodness. The problem of Calvinism is the way it depicts the character of God. It makes him fall far short of the biblical view of a God whose heart is love, who desires the salvation of all of his children.
Ron:
In your church tradition that you come from, and faith, this saving grace of God is still limited, isn't it? It's still conditional on whether or not a person accepts Christ as their personal savior. All the others are still going to hell, am I right?
Jerry:
Right, but here's the big difference. The view that I hold is that God sincerely desires to save all persons. He enables all persons to be saved. He truly prefers them to respond to his grace, and accept his grace, but here's the point, a genuine relationship of love and trust cannot be caused by God. Not even God can do that. If he gives us genuine freedom, and genuine freedom is the necessary condition for genuine love, genuine faith, genuine worship, genuine relationship. Given that is the case, necessarily if we choose not to trust, not to love, then we separate ourselves from God, and choose not to receive the good that God offers us and gives us. God enables all persons to respond, desires all persons to respond, but by nature, given the fact that we are truly free human beings that God calls us to be in a relationship with him, we can decline that. If persons are lost, it is because they will not accept the grace and love that God sincerely, genuinely extends to them.
It's a tough question any way you look at it to explain why some people are lost. I mean, it's not an easy problem for either side, but the view that I defend, and I think the Bible clearly teaches, and which I think most Christians hold, is that God sincerely loves all persons, he sincerely offers all, gives every person every chance to respond, and only those who persist in refusing God, and I've written a book about Hell called "Hell, the Logic of Damnation," and just another one recently called, "Heaven, Hell, and Purgatory." I have defended the doctrine of hell against some of the challenges mounted to it. Again, it's a difficult doctrine on either side, but it's a horrible doctrine if God unconditionally chooses to pass over people so that they cannot do anything but sin, and inevitable end up damned. That simply makes shambles of any notion of God's love and perfect goodness.
Ron:
What about Christians who would say that if you seek God with an open heart, whether through Christ or not, whether you're a Buddhist, or Hindu, or Muslim, or Taoist, you find the presence of the Divine? It's my guess that you'd say that they're not Christians, and they'll all be condemned. Is that true?
Jerry:
That is not in fact what I would say.
Ron:
Good.
Jerry:
Again, I've written about this in my books on hell. I believe God desires the salvation of all persons. I believe Christ died for all persons. They may not know about Christ. They may not know who he is, but he knows who they are, and they may not know that he died for them, but he did anyway. Many persons have not heard the gospel of Christ, but they're still responding to whatever light, or understanding, or grace that they have, and so the point of the matter is this, I believe that God is drawing every single person to himself, using whatever resources are available in terms of light and revelation that they have. If persons are responding to the light that they have, I think they will ultimately come to see the truth in Christ.
Again, there's only one God, according to Christian theology. It's the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, so ultimate salvation requires us to acknowledge the truth about God, that he is the trinity, that Jesus is his son, but many people don't have access to that truth in this life, and so what I believe is that God will give every person every opportunity, even if that includes postmortem opportunities for repentance and salvation. I don't think people are condemned for not believing a truth to which they've not had access. If people are responding to the truth that is available to them, if they're sincerely responding to the grace of God ... Again, I'm not saying this is a matter of works, but I believe God's grace is at work drawing all persons, and I believe Jesus died for all persons, again, whether they know it or not, and so grace is extended to all persons, and I think there are a lot of people who are responding to Christ, who are coming to Christ even though they may not be aware of it until maybe after their death.
Ron:
Jerry, I hate to do this to you. Do you know that we're already 42 seconds over?
Jerry:
Wow!
Ron:
I told you it would go fast, didn't I?
Listen, folks, the author is Dr. Jerry L. Walls, and I guess you use the L. Because there must be another Jerry Walls out there. The book is entitled, Does God Love Everyone? The Heart of What's Wrong with Calvinism.
If you belong to an Evangelical church, whether or not it's from the Calvin tradition or not, you should buy this book and test your knowledge and your faith. Simply click on the cover of the book on the AuthorTalk website. It will take you directly to Amazon Books, where you can buy a paperback or an e-book on Kindle.
I want to just say thank you so much, Jerry, for being on our show.
Jerry:
My pleasure. I enjoyed it.
Ron:
I certainly appreciate it, and it was great fun, and far too short. Folks, just get into the book. It's not a hard read. You can see that I got excited about this, otherwise I wouldn't be so interested in what he's saying. He's a great author so I want you to go get the book. Join us all.
Thank you again, Jerry, for spending your afternoon with us.
That's it, folks. I hope that you enjoyed that conversation with Dr. Jerry Walls like I did. He's a fascinating guy, and I must say he moved the peg a little for me, and I was very glad that he did so, because here's where I come from folks. The world that is encompassed in enclosed Christianity for the past 2000 years has been very insular, but all of that has changed with the advent of computers, Facebook, Twitter, et cetera, television, for goodness sake. We've become exposed to many people from many lands with many religious faiths.
For all this time, since Jesus, most Christians in the world knew very little about God and Jesus except what their local church told them. They probably knew that there were people in other lands, but other faiths were probably more of an abstract idea than a direct knowledge. Their priest or pastor told them that they were all going to hell, the other faiths. Most of them knew the people in their village, or their county, maybe even their country, but they never came in contact with a Buddhist of Japan, Taoist from China, Muslims in the Arab world, nor Hindus from India. It was easy to believe the teachings of the church, that they indeed were saved themselves, but the heathens, all of those other faiths, were all going to hell for eternity, but that's not so easy today.
The world is very small now. Almost all of us know Christians that are not so nice, that sin like crazy for six days, but they're supposedly saved on the seventh because they accept Jesus Christ as their savior. I'm sure that most of us know people that exhibit the reverse: people that love God with all their hearts, with all their souls, with all their strength, and with all their minds, and secondarily, they love thy neighbor as themselves. Many of them are not Christians, but are of different faiths, and different traditions. I know that by Elect, the Calvinists didn't think that God would reach down on judgement day, and actually save a Buddhist or a Hindu and declare them holy just as they were, but they did believe that he would at the last moment remove the scales from these non-Christians eyes, and then they would see that Jesus was the only way and would want to give up their faith at the last minute, and be saved as a Christian. But what of the billions of others for whom Christianity made no sense at all, or had a different idea of what Christianity was that differed from our Calvinist friends?
As I pondered all of these things, however, I begin to wonder if the Calvinists weren't accidentally and partially right in the end. I prefer to believe that their meagre definition of those that God might reach down and save might be far larger and more accepting of everyone that they thought—no matter their faith—than they intended. God's definition might indeed be far more inclusive that our small definitions allow; and our limited understanding, as we mere humans frantically tried to put fences and walls around God's love, was indeed underestimating God’s love for mankind.
I was happy to hear that Dr. Jerry Walls said that he thinks that good people of all faiths might still be saved. That's a wonderful thing, and I appreciated that. I choose to believe that this is what Jesus meant when he taught so long ago that we're all God's children, no matter our tradition or faith, when he was asked, "What is the most important thing about his teaching?" He said, "Love the Lord thy God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength, and with all your mind, and secondly love your neighbor as yourself."
May all of you be blessed this day. Give love, and let God take care of the rest. For now, this is your humble host saying farewell until we meet again in another week's time. I hope that you join our ever-growing group that seeks God with all our might by filling out the pop-up window on our website and joining our ever-growing mailing list. We don't bug you. We will just let you know each time we post another interview or write a new blog.
In the meantime, join Author Talk on Facebook every day, and add your comments to our family of people that are earnest in our desire to become One with God. That's a great way to end this day. God bless.