I like theologian Glenn Peoples, a Calvinist (he’s a fiercely intelligent Christian apologist; I only wish he would blog more often), and I like theologian Jerry Walls, an Arminian (who is also United Methodist—yay, team!).
In this post, Glenn critiques Walls’s unusual concept of Protestant purgatory. Walls wrote a book on the subject, which I haven’t read. Apparently, Walls argues that since everyone doesn’t receive a fair, equal, or “optimal” level of grace sufficient to respond to the gospel of Jesus Christ in this life, God “balances the scales” after death in a state of being that Walls calls purgatory.
This solves the problem of unfairness (assuming, against Calvinism, that it is a problem): no one will go to hell without having had a fair chance to accept God’s gift of eternal life through Christ.
As a Calvinist, Peoples naturally rejects Walls’s ideas. But he’s right about one thing: Arminianism’s concept of “prevenient grace,” which we Arminians offer as an alternative to the rigid determinism of “irresistible grace,” doesn’t completely solve the unfairness problem—as Walls well knows, otherwise he wouldn’t be proposing a Protestant purgatory. Peoples writes:
So actually, given Walls’ view that not everybody has had a chance to be saved in this life, Arminianism is in the same boat and subject to the same objection as Calvinism here: The distribution of grace isn’t fair! Of course, a Calvinist just bites this bullet hard: Nobody deserves eternal life, and God chooses to give it to some. If you don’t like it, talk to the hand. Now, Walls can say, of course, the Arminian who doesn’t believe in a second chance after death has a widerbase of people who can be saved: namely all those who have heard the Gospel in this life. But still, there are some who, as Walls puts it, have not “had such grace in this life.” Based on what has happened in this life, Walls thinks, they can’t be saved. So Arminians have a problem that is surely only better in degree than the problem had by Calvinists, but which is the same in principle (assuming there’s a problem here, as Walls does).
Lest you think I’m becoming a Calvinist, I would say that while prevenient grace doesn’t solve this particular problem, it also doesn’t introduce new ones: like how to square double-predestination and irresistible grace with the obvious (from my perspective) biblical truth that we human beings are ultimately responsible for choosing God’s gift of salvation.
I’ve heard Calvinists complaining about the misleading language of popular evangelicalism, which stresses the importance of “accepting Christ as Savior and Lord”—the good old-fashioned Billy Graham-style invitation. This, they say, places an emphasis on the wrong side of the equation: human response rather than God’s initiative.
Theologically, I understand the concern, but I dismiss it: any language we use will ultimately fail to capture all the mystery and nuance of salvation. To speak of “accepting Christ” is good enough for me.
Besides, call Arminians like me “semi-Pelagian” all you want, nothing in the Gospels and nothing in Paul’s letters convinces me that we don’t ultimately get to choose to respond to the gospel of Jesus Christ—at some level, in whatever qualified way we wish to explain it. God doesn’t override our will, even if, through grace, God helps it along.
In the comments section of Peoples’s post, Peoples and his commenters discuss Molinism, another attempt to solve the problem of unfairness. Molinism says that since God knows whether or not an individual would accept Christ under the most favorable circumstances, he places that person in the right place—geographically and historically—so that they either will or won’t make that choice. In other words, no unsaved individual will die and face judgment who would have been saved under other circumstances. If, for example, an unsaved person dies having never heard or responded to the gospel—because they lived in North Korea or an Islamist country where the church is underground and Christian evangelism is illegal—it doesn’t matter: even if they’d been born in the buckle of the Bible Belt a hundred years ago, they still wouldn’t have accepted Christ.
I personally find Molinism less appealing than Walls’s purgatory. And Peoples raises an interesting proof-text against it:
In Luke 10:13 Jesus didn’t say “everyone who did not get the opportunity would have rejected the opportunity anyway.” In fact he seems to be saying the opposite: That some people who didn’t get a chance to hear are actually people who would have accepted the opportunity, and repented. So if we think about grace and our response to it in Arminian terms (as Bill does), it would appear that the contention that everyone who would have repented gets the chance to do before they die is not a biblical contention.
I confess I’m not as bothered by this question of “fairness” as I’m supposed to be. First, because I trust God to be perfectly fair in Final Judgment, so I don’t have to worry about it. Second, as far as I can tell, most people I know—at least in my little Bible-Belt corner of the American South—have already received a sufficient amount of grace to respond to the gospel. If they haven’t already accepted Christ, maybe they never will. Or maybe they need us Christians to work harder to persuade them!
I’m mostly uninterested in any theological proposal—post-mortem “optimal grace,” Calvinistic determinism, and difference-splitting Molinism—that diminishes the urgency of our evangelistic task.
Of course, even as I write this, I recognize my hypocrisy. What’s my problem when it comes to evangelism? It’s not like I’m beating down people’s doors to share the gospel with them! Am I living and ministering with a sufficient sense of urgency?
Well, I promise I’m getting better about evangelism. But I have plenty more work to do in that area!
What we know for sure is this: God has given us this time on earth to hear and respond to the gospel. Those of us who’ve already repented and said “yes” to God’s offer of salvation through Christ have our work cut out for us.