What is required for salvation? Mere acceptance of Jesus Christ as having died for mankind’s sins? Or, in addition to that, does salvation also require a life that bears witness to submission to Christ as Lord?
Historically, proponents of the latter view have faulted the former view as “cheap grace.” In his book The Gospel According to Jesus (Zondervan, 1988), John MacArthur, widely known pastor of Grace Community Church in Sun Valley, California, and president of The Master’s College and Seminary, used the term “easy believism” to express the same criticism. MacArthur’s book reignited an old debate, the fires of which continue to burn strongly among some of this country’s leading evangelical scholars.
Sometime this spring or summer, two more books will likely add fuel to the fire. Saving Grace (Redencion Viva Books), by Zane Hodges, and So Great Salvation (Victor Books), by Charles Ryrie, are—at least in part—responses to MacArthur’s book. Hodges and Ryrie, both former professors at Dallas Theological Seminary, are among those whose views on salvation were specifically challenged by MacArthur.
Fruitless Believers
In his book, MacArthur argued that most contemporary evangelical teaching on salvation is rife with “easy-believism,” which, he says, is a doctrine that gives bare intellectual assent to the redemptive work of Christ while failing to call Christians to true repentance and a life of obedience and good works. “Easy-believism,” he wrote, “is justification without sanctification,” resulting in a “community of professing believers populated by people who have bought into a system that encourages shallow and ineffectual faith.”
MacArthur suggested in his book that many who occupy mainstream evangelical church pews across America “sincerely believe they are saved but are utterly barren of any verifying fruit in their lives.” These are people, he says, who may someday stand before Christ “stunned to learn they are not included in the kingdom.”
MacArthur holds that the only correct biblical model of the salvation experience is a doctrine known traditionally as “lordship salvation.” In essence, it holds that to be saved a person “must trust Jesus Christ as Lord of his life, submitting to His sovereign authority.”
In contrast, scholars such as Ryrie, Hodges, now pastor of the Victor Street Chapel Church in Dallas and editor of the journal of the Grace Evangelistic Society, have long held that a doctrine requiring anything beyond acknowledgment of sin and acceptance of Christ’s sacrifice on the cross corrupts the theology of grace.
Darrell L. Bock, an associate professor of New Testament Studies at Dallas seminary and among those cited by MacArthur as opposing lordship salvation, said it was his understanding that Hodges’s book would be a direct response to MacArthur’s. However, Ryrie, whose past work includes the popular Ryrie Study Bible, said his book “should not be seen as a reaction to MacArthur’s book,” though he said he would quote MacArthur in defining his own views.
Irreconcilable Differences?
This salvation debate has not been limited to the printed word. MacArthur has criticized opponents of his views over his nationally heard “Grace to You” radio program. He included a swipe at the suburban Chicago-based Awana Clubs International youth ministry because of an evangelism training film that MacArthur claims encourages youth workers to downplay the costs of becoming a Christian.
Art Rohrheim, executive director of Awana, told CHRISTIANITY TODAY that his organization stands by the film. He suggested it is MacArthur, not Awana, who is drifting away from mainstream evangelical views. Others have said they are concerned with the divisiveness MacArthur’s book has produced.
Phillip Johnson, publications manager and director of international ministries for MacArthur’s ministry, maintains that MacArthur’s views are the same as they’ve always been. Johnson, who helped edit The Gospel According to Jesus, said publication of MacArthur’s perspective in book form “probably caught some people by surprise.”
Bock, who said he has corresponded cordially with MacArthur since writing a critical review of The Gospel According to Jesus in the seminary’s journal, Bibliotheca Sacra, believes the air needs to be cleared.
“When it comes right down to it,” Bock said, “there are some issues—some doctrinal differences—that we won’t be able to resolve. But we really need to sit down together and put all our views on the table, minus the word heresy. When you use that word, everyone digs in and tries to defend their orthodoxy. I think we have a situation where there’s truth to be understood on both sides, and there are a tremendous number of people in the middle who are terribly confused.”
By Brian Bird.
