Grace and Freedom: Two Words, One Mystery

This is from Vladimir Lossky's book, The Mystical Theology of the Eastern Church (St. Vladimir's Seminary Press, Crestwood, New York, 1976). This excerpt appears near the beginning of Chapter Ten; in my edition, it begins on page 197.

The notion of merit is foreign to the Eastern tradtion. The word is seldom encountered in the spiritual writings of the Eastern Church, and has not the same meaning as in the West. The explanation is to be sought in the general attitude of Eastern theology towards grace and free will. In the East, this question has never had the urgency which it assumed in the West from the time of St. Augustine onwards. The Eastern tradition never separates these two elements: grace and human freedom are manifested simultaneously and cannot be conceived apart from each other. St. Gregory of Nyssa describes very clearly the reciprocal bond that makes of grace and free will two poles of one and the same reality: 'As the grace of God cannot descend upon souls which flee from their salvation, so the power of human virtue is not of itself sufficient to raise to perfection souls which have no share in grace ... the righteousness of works and the grace of the Spirit, coming together to the same place, fill the soul in which they are united with the life of the blessed.' ('De Instituto Christiano', P.G., XLVI, 289 C.)

Note (my own): St. Gregory does not mean God deprives anybody of His grace, but that some people do not want it and God will not force Himself upon them. But in the blessed, grace and works unite and together fill the soul. Lossky continues:

Thus, grace is not a reward for the merit of the human will, as Pelagianism would have it; but no more is it the cause of the 'meritorious acts' of our free will., For it is not a question of merits but of a co-operation, of a synergy of the two wills, divine and human, a harmony in which grace bears ever more and more fruit, and is appropriated - 'acquired' - by the human person. Grace is a presence of God within us which demands constant effort on our part; these efforts, however, in no way determine grace, nor does grace act upon our liberty as if it were external or foreign to it.

If you are not a theology buff, you'll probably be glad to stop reading right here. But if you like this sort of stuff, here's a bit more. The above paragraph continues:

This doctrine, faithful to the apophatic spirit of Eastern tradition, expresses the mystery of the coincidence of grace and human freedom in good workis, without recourse to positive and rational terms. The fundamental error of Pelagius was that of transposing the mystery of grace on to a rational plane, by which process grace and liberty, realities of the spiritual order, are transformed into two mutually exclusive concepts which then have to be reconciled, as if they were two objects exterior to one another. St. Augustine, in his attack on Pelagianism, followed the example of his adversary intaking his stand on the same rational ground, where there was no possibility of the question ever being resolved.

More Thoughts (Mine) on Ephesians 2:8-10

For by grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves; it is the gift of God, not of works, lest anyone should boast. For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them. (Ephesians 2:8-10)


We need to be careful, with Ephesians 2:8-10, not to try to force it to bear too much theological baggage. As St. John Chrysostom points out (see my first post of today), it isn’t meant to deny the role of free will. It doesn’t mean God decides not to accept any of our works, in order to keep us humble, and decides to accept only faith instead. Rather, it means God accepts us on the basis of our faith precisely because we come to Him bereft of any worthy works. What we once supposed were our good deeds turn out, in the harsh light of reality, to be about as spotless as used menstrual pads. (Isaiah 64:6) They were all done in the service of the beast within.

This passage means nothing we can do ever earns salvation, because it isn’t earnable; it’s a pure gift; it’s free, from God’s own loving Heart. Moreover, we ourselves do not have the power to do the things saving us requires, such as the power to unite divine nature with human nature or to kill death by dying, or to ascend into heaven.

If we try to make more of these verses, if for instance we hang from this passage a theory that we humans cannot contribute one single thing, however slight, to our salvation, not even our free choice to accept the faith God offers us, then the difference between our being saved or not will rest, ultimately, with God. The paradox Lutherans and others offer us won’t hold. According to it, if we are saved, the glory is all God’s, and if we are lost, the fault is all our own. This is true, but (paradoxically!) only if we have free will. Because what fault is it of mine that I willed only evil, if I was born, indeed conceived, unable to will anything else? No, if my salvation depends exclusively upon God, and He has all the power to save, and chooses to save you but not me, then it is His doing that I am lost. And this is so even if God only passively chooses to damn me; that is, does not choose to save me. Either way, my fate is His choice alone. That’s another way of asserting that “Double Predestination” (God chooses to save some and chooses to damn others) and “Single Predestination” (God chooses to save some but not all) are practically and morally identical.

And in that case, you contradict the whole rest of the Christian message about Who God is, and contradict certain other biblical passages as well, such as I Timothy 2:4, which speaks of God our Savior, “Who will have all men to be saved, and to come unto the knowledge of the truth,” and Ezekiel 33:11, “Say unto them, [As] I live, says the Lord GOD, I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked; but that the wicked turn from his way and live: turn ye, turn ye from your evil ways; for why will ye die, O house of Israel?” and 2 Peter 3:9, “The Lord is not slack concerning his promise, as some men count slackness; but is longsuffering toward us, not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance.” (See also Ezekiel 18:23 and 18:32)

Faith in Christ is something God makes possible for us, but we still either embrace or reject Him. To reject Christ makes it impossible for God to get any further with us. To embrace Christ (in faith) is a work, yes, face it, a work. It isn’t a work that makes us worthy of anything, but faith in Christ does make it possible for Grace to proceed with His transfiguring (saving) work in us. Faith isn't what saves us, Grace is. Faith is not why God saves us, His Love alone is. But faith in Christ is the instrument through which God is able to work in us. In that sense, salvation does indeed depend upon it.

And if you do not wish to affirm some capricious, monster god, there’s no way around this: you have to admit that to go with Christ or to reject Him is ultimately up to us; and that our own rejecting of Him when we could have chosen Him (rejecting Him, as distinct from merely not yet having acquired faith in Him) is what sinks us, and not God’s omitting to do anything whatsoever for the salvation of every single one of us.

Free Will in Conversion, Part V (Final)

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If we say (and we do) that God and God alone can bestow upon people the ability to know and to desire something of goodness, and to perform as much of it as they know, or try to change when they fail, then we must add that God has never withheld the gift of these abilities from anybody. Why must we say this? Because otherwise we are indirectly but inescapably saying God is a monster.

First, if there were anyone who from his conception until his death never had the ability even to desire the good, much less do it, then he would not be responsible for the evil he did. If we add that God (and God alone) could give him the ability to strive for the right or pursue the wrong, but does not, then we make God responsible for that person’s wrong choices. That’s another way of saying God is evil. Whoever has the choice is the one responsible for it. God must either abolish evil or be guilty of it. Or else we must say evil exists because man has a measure of genuine freedom, given him that his freely choosing the right may have value and meaning.

Second, if a person from conception to death never has even the ability to desire the good, there is no fair, moral ground for condemning him to hell. “Oh, but he willed the evil he did,” some may say, “so God is justified in condemning him.” So then what you do is accuse God’s own law of justifying His unfairness, immorality and monstrousness! No. The person cannot be said truly to have willed the evil if he could not have willed otherwise; that’s just playing with words. That’s sophistry. God, who could have given him that freedom but didn’t, would have no ground for allowing such a person to suffer eternally. He shouldn’t even have created such a person who never had any chance, to whom He never intended to give any chance for anything but eternal suffering. You can’t get around it; such a teaching portrays God as repugnant, hateful, and immoral.

To avoid making God out a monster one must affirm that there is nobody who never had a chance. Though we universally fail, it is and always was exclusively our own fault; it was never from God’s withholding from us any chance to succeed in fulfilling His will for us. We fail. It isn’t because we could not do otherwise; it’s because (worse) we would not.

Free Will in Conversion, Part IV

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God does not save you because He is pleased with you. Pleasing God is good, but it is not what saves you any more than displeasing Him is what damns you.

God does not even save you because He is legally although not existentially pleased with you. He does not save you because He is pleased with the Christ He sees when He looks at you or because He is in some way pretending to be pleased with you or because He is somehow shielding His eyes from all that is displeasing in you or because He is morally obligated “for Christ’s sake” to save you. We don’t have to go through all those theological explanations, contortions, and shenanigans to come up with how we can be (regarded as) sufficiently pleasing to God for Him to save us. Why not? Because that isn’t why He saves us in the first place. God does not save you because He is pleased with you! He was already good and gracious toward you all along, whether you pleased Him or not.

God saves you purely because He wants to. He wants to purely because He loves you. He loves you purely and only because He freely chooses to love you, and everybody else, with an infinite love. Period. Hold that thought. It’s the same thing as saying salvation is not a merit system.

Once we understand that salvation is not a merit system, we shall have no trouble in asserting that yes, a pagan who has never heard of Christ can indeed please God. He can do this by desiring the good, insofar as he may understand that good, and by attempting to do that good, as well. He can even succeed to some extent in doing the good, too. I’m not the one saying this; St. Paul is, in Romans 1. Our hypothetical pagan can potentially rack up some merit!

Bear in mind that the merit no more buys him salvation than Monopoly money does. We do not even need to point out (although it is true) that the good is highly imperfect, or that he will indubitably rack up some demerits as well, or that the merit is not enough to save the man. And why do we not need to point out these things? Because even if the merit were infinite, that is not why God saves anybody! Much less do we need to resort to calling good evil by saying his righteousness is only apparent, but in reality is “filthy rags”. This only applies to someone who, having heard Christ rightly preached, has outright rejected Him. In such a person, his “good” works amount to hypocrisy; but in the person who has not rejected the true Christ, his good works are really, truly, in some degree, good! Which still does not obligate God to save him. God cannot be obligated at all, by anything whatsoever, nor needs to be, since He already, without any inducement, wishes to save both the good and the wicked.

When anybody is saved (put into intimate, eternal communion with God) it is simply and only because God wants to save him, because He loves him, because He freely chooses to love Him. God in Christ has already accomplished all things necessary for our salvation; the one remaining thing is our consent. To save us apart from our consent is a contradiction in terms, a flat impossibility. There is no “salvation“ that does not also save our will, rendering us free as Christ is free, so that we freely participate in God’s own life. Our will is an essential component of our very humanity, let alone of becoming participants in divinity. There is no such thing as a love we can offer God that was extorted from us. That’s another oxymoron.

Our ultimate destiny depends upon God’s love, which, however, is a given, and upon our giving our free consent to it at some point. God’s love alone is the cause of our salvation; our free, genuine, and active consent, enabled by Him, and with all this consent implies, is only the condition, the thing that gives His saving work the go-ahead, makes it possible.

Free Will in Conversion, Part III

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Can a person choose Christ?

If so, who can do so?

First, let’s clear away from our radar screen the old canard about, “What of those who have never heard of Christ?” If they have never heard of Him, then the question of whether they can choose Him is, if not an absurdity, at least moot. It is outside the scope of what I’d like to discuss here.

Next, let’s establish what things are under consideration, about which the question of choice arises. Most of the things concerning our salvation are not included in this category; that is, they are already accomplished by God without any input from us. For example, God created you without your consent. You were born without your consent. Christ healed and restored your messed-up human nature by uniting it in one, single Person to His divine nature – without your asking for it. He taught and cured and preached without your having chosen it. He shed upon the world His forgiveness together with His blood, without consulting you. He made human nature stronger than death, by taking it through death and emerging with it triumphant on the other side, so that with Him you might do the same – without your having any say in the matter. He poured out the Holy Spirit upon the world without your asking for it, and established His Church for you, to be the focal point of His continuing presence in the world, and perhaps He has even baptized you, all without your contributing anything at all. He will separate you from your sins, by means of death, whether you want it or not, whether you consider that deliverance or deprivation. He will raise you from the grave whether you want it or not, and it is not in your own power either to rise or to return to death. He will one day enlighten you with His Truth whether you like it or not, whether you find that Truth horrifying or beautiful.

In these things, we have no choice. They are not part of our question about whether we can “choose Christ.” As St. Nicholas Cabasilas says (see fuller quote here):

God indeed wills all good things for all men and imparts to all alike of all His own gifts, both those which benefit the will and those which restore nature. On our part we all receive the gifts of God which pertain to nature even though we do not desire them, since we cannot escape them. So He does good to those who are unwilling and compels them lovingly. Whenever we wish to shake off His kindness we are unable to do so.

But such things as whether to love God, trust Christ, let our lives be directed by the Holy Spirit, and repent, these things are those around which the debate centers: can man choose these?

Before trying to answer that, let us consider what “choose” means. Are we asking whether he who hears the Gospel rightly preached has the power to desire Christ? How about the power to believe in and trust Him? How about the power actually to do something about it, like love God, repent of sins?

I think we are asking all three. In Orthodoxy, the answers, in a nutshell, are:

Every man can desire the good. (Otherwise, we have major theological problems and contradictions; see upcoming post.) A man can even desire more of the good than has fully been revealed to him, as the prophets did, who could only comparatively dimly foresee what has been fulfilled for us, and as Christians do, who for now only see some of the ultimate realities in the mirror, dimly. It’s called hope.

Every man can believe as much as has been revealed to him by the Holy Spirit.

Every man can put into practice (very imperfectly!) as much as has been revealed to him. St. Paul says the Gentiles do, who having no Law of Moses, still have God’s principles written on their hearts, viz., built in. When they do the things of God, they do it “by nature,” says St. Paul. Everybody can do this much.

St. John says (John 1:12) “...as many as received Him, to them He gave the power to become children of God, to those who believe in His name.” Some people would have us believe it the other way around: “those to whom He gave the power to become the children of God, they received Him and believed in His name.” But this is backwards; this is the reverse of what St. John says.

Does that mean we can desire Christ, believe and trust Him, repent and turn to Him, on our own? I don’t even know what that question means. Was any man ever really “on his own”? Is breathing something a person can do on his own, or is it by the gift of God? Can anyone even stay alive by his own power, absent the grace of God? The point is, the grace of God is never absent! He never withdraws His Grace, who makes His sun to shine upon the just and the unjust alike, and the blessing of His rain to fall upon the evil and the good alike, who keeps us all in existence every moment. (To say God never withdraws His grace is not to say God blesses our evil plans and projects! It just means He still always offers us the real possibility of change, of newness, of repentance and forgiveness.)

Wherever and whenever Christ is revealed to anybody, it is always, by definition, the Holy Spirit revealing Him. It was specifically the Holy Spirit who revealed Christ at His baptism and at His transfiguration and at Pentecost. “…I make known to you,” says St. Paul, “that no one speaking by the Spirit of God calls Jesus accursed, and no one can say that Jesus is Lord except by the Holy Spirit. (I Corinthians 12:3) A person cannot believe what is not revealed to him, and Christ is only and always revealed by the Holy Spirit.

Jesus said, “No man can come to me, except the Father which hath sent me draw him.” (John 6:44a) He also pointed out that without Him, we can do nothing. (John 15:5)

So we say that Christ is revealed by the Holy Spirit, the Father is drawing a person toward Christ, Christ is lending His support to strengthen the person's weak and compromised will, and God has given that person the ability to say yes (or no) to the incipient faith trying to bloom in him. Just now, we need not quarrel too much over *when* God gave that gift, whether on the spot as some say or whether by having preserved the ability in man all along, as the Orthodox say; the main point is, by the time any person is confronted with the choice, he is genuinely able, by grace and never apart from it, to receive the divinely-created faith, love, and hope. God does grant him to be able to repent. There is no one, none, from whom He withholds this grace. If anyone rejects God, it is most assuredly not because God failed to enable him to repent.

Moreover, this choice is a genuine act of ours. Although God is indeed working in us to produce the “yes,” He is not making the choice for us or overriding our will. His gift is greater than that. His gift is that we are truly able to say yes, not apart from Him (for that would be a contradiction in terms, an oxymoron), but nevertheless as our own act, of our own will.

Anything less than this is not salvation! Why not? Because it would render us automatons. It would fail to conform us to the image of the Son (Romans 8:29) who does have free will. It would fail even to restore us to Adam’s pristine state.

Is a “yes” decision the cause of my salvation? Certainly not! There is no way I can cause my salvation. God saves me because He wants to, because He loves me, period. But faith, if I embrace it, is the means through which His grace can work in me. “By grace through faith are you saved, and that, not of yourselves…” (see Ephesians 2:8-10)

Bear in mind, too, that this decision does not carry with it any credit. There is no room for boasting. Salvation is not a merit system. But even if it were, well, here is an illustration I like to use. Suppose I jump off the Brooklyn Bridge. The rescue squad arrives and someone swims out to tie me to a life vest and haul me to shore. Suppose he drowns in the process, but does succeed in saving me. Is there really any fear I’ll get some smidgeon of credit for merely letting him? I’m the one who had forfeited my life and the life of my rescuer too!

No, it is not a question of my deserving anything, least of all, salvation. It is simply the case that everybody gets what he most truly, most profoundly, in his heart of hearts, wants. If what we love and want most is Christ, fine; it will work because that’s what God also wants for us. God wants to give us Christ, and with and in Him everything true, good, beautiful, joyous, real, and worthwhile. If we do not want Christ, there is no way to force us to love Him (short of making us into automatons, which would entirely defeat the purpose). And if we persist until our rejection of Christ hardens to become irreversible, we shall find ourselves forever alienated from everything true, good, beautiful., etc., in short, estranged from everything that makes being alive better than never having been born.

Lord, I believe; help Thou my unbelief! Kyrie, eleison!

Free Will in Conversion, Part II

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“The line between good and evil runs through the human heart.” So far, I have not found the primary source for these words, but they are attributed to Alexander Solzhenitsyn.

This is an important point in Christian anthropology and one with important social, cultural, and political implications. The line between good and evil does not run between you and me or between us and them. It runs straight (or crookedly!) through each of us. There is no saint here and sinner there; rather, each of us is some of both. Lutherans have something akin to what I am getting at in their doctrine of simul justus et peccator, at once just(ified) and sinner.

There is no “natural man” over there (somebody else) and “spiritual man” here; both “men” are conditions and degrees of being. Thus, St. Paul tells his flock at Corinth, who are baptized Christians, washed in the laver of regeneration, that they have not yet become spiritual men. (I Corinthians 3:1-3)

When he says of the natural man that he “does not receive the things of the Spirit of God,” he is speaking of the natural part of each of us, and not of separate human beings. Furthermore, St. Paul explains why this is so, and it does not have to do with man’s will, but with his darkened intellect. The natural man does not receive the things of God “for they are foolishness to him; nor can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned.” (1 Corinthians 2:14)

There is no person over there who has one set of desires, which are always only sinful, and another person here (I, of course!) who has another set of desires which are holy.

On the one hand, even the Gentiles have some spiritual light “because what may be known of God is manifest among them, for God has shown it to them. For since the creation of the world His invisible attributes are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, namely His eternal power and Godhead.” (Romans 1:19-20) It is not the case that they know nothing of God, but rather, they “exchanged the truth of God for the lie” (v. 25) and “they did not like to retain God in their knowledge” (v. 28). St. John further tells us that the Logos (articulate intellect) of God was “the light that enlightens every man coming into the world.” (John 1)

Furthermore, the Gentiles know something of the will of God and are even able, in some degree, to do it. “For when the Gentiles,” says St. Paul, “which have not the law, do by nature the things contained in the law, these, having not the law, are a law unto themselves: Which show the work of the law written in their hearts, their conscience also bearing witness, and [their] thoughts the mean while accusing or else excusing one another.” (Romans 2:14-15) Yes, they can obey the law of God. Yes, they do it by nature. It is written on their hearts, by grace. “But they only obey very imperfectly,” you say? So what? Christians do the same.

For what I am doing, I do not understand. For what I will to do, that I do not practice; but what I hate, that I do. If, then, I do what I will not to do, I agree with the law that it is good. But now, it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells in me. For I know that in me (that is, in my flesh) nothing good dwells; for to will is present with me, but how to perform what is good I do not find. For the good that I will to do, I do not do; but the evil I will not to do, that I practice. Now if I do what I will not to do, it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells in me. I find then a law, that evil is present with me, the one who wills to do good. For I delight in the law of God according to the inward man. But I see another law in my members, warring against the law of my mind, and bringing me into captivity to the law of sin which is in my members. O wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death? I thank God--through Jesus Christ our Lord! So then, with the mind I myself serve the law of God, but with the flesh the law of sin. (Romans 7:15-25)

St. Paul is describing the fallen man within each of us. Here we see man having two sets of desires. The one is the desire of the flesh, residing literally in our bodies. Our bodies demand food, drink, sex, sleep, warmth, clothing, shelter, security, various pleasures, comforts, satisfactions and thrills. Meanwhile, the “inner man” delights in the law of God, namely love, which demands that we give all of ourselves to God and each other instead of to our own bodies, seeking always the welfare of others above our own. The “I” wants to serve God, but is in “captivity” to the desires of the flesh. Sin usurps the self, and sin (“no longer I”) disobeys.

St. Paul makes the same point in Galatians 5:17: “For the desires of the flesh are against the Spirit, and the desires of the Spirit are against the flesh, for these are opposed to each other, to keep you from doing the things you want to do.” Note, you want to do these things, he says, even though the desires of the flesh seek to defeat you. You are both flesh and spirit, and as Jesus said, “The spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak.” (Matthew 26:41)

Each of us has two sets of desires, between which he chooses. You can willingly set your mind on the flesh (Romans 8:7) or you can try (at least) not to. Your will is part of who you are as a human being, and is not the exclusive property of that condition called “the spiritual man.” Therefore, when a person is “dead in sins,” it means he is operating according to the dictates of the flesh, rather than in accordance with the Spirit – but that is not at all the same as to say his free will has disappeared. And I mean a genuinely free will, able to desire good or evil. To call anything else a free will is dishonest word games.

Please note carefully that I have not yet said a man can “choose Christ” at all, much less that he can do it on his own, apart from the grace of God. So far, I am only asserting that every man is genuinely able to desire such good as he knows, is able to strive after that good, and is able, with a high degree of imperfection, to perform it. There aren’t some people who can do this (believers) and others who cannot at all (unbelievers). There are, instead, only people whose free will is impaired by sin, and no people in whom free will is entirely ruined or absent.

There are various other reasons for asserting that a person cannot “choose Christ”. These I’ll discuss in another post. For now, all I want to say is, lack of ability to desire either good or bad is not one of them.

Free Will in Conversion, Part I

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(Full disclosure: I am getting ready to write a short section on this topic in the book I'm working on, as part of the last chapter. This is not necessarily anything like the text of that section, however. There, I will not directly be dealing with any views but Orthodox ones.)

An important question, for many people, is whether man can in any way cooperate in his own salvation.

Part of how we answer that question will of course depend upon what salvation is. For example, does it include what the non-Orthodox call “sanctification”? Is it a merit system?

For the Orthodox, yes, it includes roughly what others mean by “sanctification” and no, salvation is not a merit system. That means merit is not what saves us and demerits are not what condemn us. Thus salvation neither can be nor needs to be merited at all. Not only we ourselves cannot and need not merit it, but even Christ cannot and need not earn or merit it for us, either, for salvation is pure gift. We would consider it a slur upon God’s magnanimity to suppose otherwise.

Even if the right exercise of free will were meritorious, so what? Merit does not save us. We are saved by union with God in Christ. Rather, union with Christ does not get us into heaven; it already is heaven, for Christ Himself is our heaven. Union with Christ is not a means to an end (His merits getting us to that end); for anybody who loves Christ, union with Him already is the goal. And union with Christ is not by merit, but by grace through faith.

Similarly, demerits are not what condemn us. Separation from God condemns us – or rather, separation from Him does not send us to hell but already is hell, for in Him is everything good and true and beautiful – and we are separated from God because we walk away from Him, not because of our failure to collect merits (although, having rejected God, we do fail in that, too).

That’s why the Orthodox don’t worry whether the right exercise of our free will might imply we had done something meritorious. In the first place, to use our free will rightly is what we were made for, the same way a fish was made to swim or a bird to fly; and we get no more "merit" for doing what we were made for than they do. Secondly, even if we did gain some merit by making the right choice, what would the merit be FOR? It has no more use than Monopoly money; it's strictly for playing games.

Those, and only those, who implicitly assume salvation is about merit will feel the need to avoid assigning us any, in order to give God all the glory. They are right that we have none. But then they go on seeking to avoid assigning us any merit by denying that we are able to cooperate in our salvation in any way. They tell us fallen man’s “free will” is able only to choose evil, meaning it is not actually free at all. The natural man can only resist God, and actively does so.

From an Orthodox point of view, this teaching appropriates several rather egregious misunderstandings of Scripture, but that subject is for another post, as are about four or five serious theological objections to it. For now, I’d just like to point out that except in Calvinism, this doctrine of free will does not seem to accomplish what it sets out to do.

How, in this model, is anyone saved? Well, as I understand it (If I’m mistaken, somebody please correct me!), when people hear the Gospel rightly preached, the Holy Spirit, working through the Gospel, overrides the resistance of some of them – it isn’t clear to me which ones or why not all of them – and bestows upon them the ability to receive the gift of faith and to choose Christ. In Calvinism, this grace once given is irresistible, but in other traditions such as Lutheranism, one can – take note! – one can either accept or reject it. And upon that choice depends ones salvation. In other words, man had something to do with his own salvation after all. That’s why, besides being objectionable upon several serious grounds (stay tuned) this doctrine, from an outsider's perspecive, appears simply pointless.

Your thoughts?