Sproul's influence

TESTIMONY OF ONE
WHO SAW THE ERROR
OF SPROUL & HYBRIDISM

Ian D. Elsasser left a new comment on the post about "Sproul's error," but I thought his interesting comment was worthy of being featured as a "lead" article. The following is Brother Elsasser's testimony about his personal experience in relation to Calvinism and R. C. Sproul:

R. C. Sproul's Chosen by God was instrumental in my move to Calvinism in Bible College. The first time I read it I remained unconvinced. During my last year of College, Don Carson came to our College and gave a series of lectures from the Gospel of John. After his lecture on John 6 in which he plainly set forth the predestinarian elements of the chapter, I remember walking back to my dorm deep in thought, grabbing Sproul's book to read through it once again and praying, "God, if this is true, please help me to love it."

By the end I had become convinced that the Calvinistic position was correct and became a Calvinist. Of course, I accepted Sproul's view that regeneration precedes faith, believing it to be the biblical and Calvinistic view.

A few years ago I began to see that some of the passages that supposedly taught it did not. I remember, for example, examining 1 John 5.1 and seeing exegetically that it was not concerned with an ordo salutis, that it was being read into the text. I later disavowed the regeneration precedes faith view and came to see that there was a third alternative to the two options commonly presented: namely, that neither preceded the other but that they were simultaneous. I came to see that the frequently used "logical priority" phrasing was incorrect and actually masked that repentance and faith are constituent elements of the new birth, that where you had the one (whether faith/repentance or regeneration) you had the other.

This view, I learned, had roots in older Calvinism and was held by many Calvinists from the sixteenth century to present, though it is not often given as an alternative in the discussions about the relationship of conversion and regeneration.

Maybe someone is reading this and has rejected Calvinism because he or she thinks it is bound up with the teaching that regeneration (logically or otherwise) precedes faith/repentance/conversion. Please understand that Calvinism does not necessitate this view. Rather, Calvinism teaches that repentance and faith are gifts of God, that they are given by God, and this giving or granting is the new birth. They occur together or are comcomitant.

I am a Calvinist yet I do not believe regeneration (the new birth) occurs before faith. I believe they occur at the same time. The new birth does not occur without or apart from faith; where you have one, you have the other.

Bob, you have done a great service over the years by hammering away at this issue. Keep at it.

Seeing that this article was prompted by Stephen Garrett's work on the subject, I must acknowledge and thank him for all the hours of research and writing he has done over the last several years online.

Good work, men.

BOB'S NOTE: Brother Elsasser is one of several who say that they have been helped by our blogs to see that the "regeneration" theory of many in the modern Reformed camp is not creedal Calvinism, but is a hybrid development, not sustained in the creedal standards.