A few weeks ago I delivered a paper at the WTS meeting on the subject of the minimum that one must believe to be saved. The paper is on this website here. This blog post will give you an opportunity to respond to that paper once you have read it (comment below). Below is an excerpt: My understanding of prevenient grace significantly impacts my view of the unevangelized. I believe that prevenient grace is extended to everyone in the world. If one responds to prevenient grace, no matter how far removed he is from missionary influences, God will give him (or her) more light and grace. This grace can eventually enable the seeker to exercise faith in Jesus, even if the seeker doesn’t know the name of Jesus, or even if God has to send a missionary or angel to reveal important truths to him. God will save anyone who seeks the one true God of creation with his whole heart (Jeremiah 29:13). No one will stand before God and truthfully say that it was impossible for him to find the true God and trust in Jesus. If someone is not a seeker of God throughout his life, he will realize when he stands at the judgment that he could have begun to seek God and would have been given sufficient special revelation (at least enough to exercise implicit faith in Christ) if he had been a genuine (and persistent) seeker of God.
I've heard some Christians say that it is inappropriate to pray to Jesus. One of the papers on this website refutes that claim. Following is a brief excerpt from that paper: If it were wrong to pray to Jesus (and the Spirit), it would be wrong to sing many of the hymns in our songbooks. Having gone through about ½ of a hymnbook I have, I discovered many songs we should take out if it is wrong to pray to Jesus and the Spirit. Below are some examples of these songs (with their “offending” text).
Love Divine All Loves Excelling
…Jesus, Thou art all compassion; Pure, unbounded love Thou art.
Visit us with Thy salvation; Enter every trembling heart.
Jesus, Lover of My Soul
…let me to thy bosom fly
…Hide me, O my Savior, hide
…Oh, receive my soul at last!
More Love to Thee
…O Christ, more love to Thee!
Hear Thou the prayer I make on bended knee.
This is my earnest plea: More love, O Christ, to Thee.
Close to Thee
Thou, my everlasting portion, More than friend or life to me,
All along my pilgrim journey, Savior, let me walk with Thee.
Close to Thee…
My Jesus, I Love Thee
…I know Thou art mine.
For Thee all the follies of sin I resign.
My gracious Redeemer, my Savior art Thou.
If ever I loved Thee, my Jesus, ‘tis now.
My Faith Looks Up to Thee
…Thou Lamb of Calvary, Savior divine!
Now hear me while I pray; Take all my guilt away.
Oh, let me from this day Be wholly Thine!
Come, Holy Ghost, Our Hearts Inspire
…Let us Thine influence prove:
Source of the old prophetic fire.
Fountain of life and love.
Man was created to focus on God, to know him, to bring glory and honor to Him. But what happened? We turned inward, focused on ourself and our desires, and as a result began to believe wrong things about ourself and our relationship to God. We began to have an erroneous understanding of who God is. The Creator/creature distinction was partially obliterated. We began to think that our selfish desires were more important than God’s desires. And with the freedom that we had as creatures made in the image of God, we set our will against God’s will and disobeyed Him.
It’s too late to stop Adam and Eve from abusing their freedom, but what lesson can we learn from them? We need to learn that we must constantly resist the enemy’s attempt to get us to turn inward, to focus on what we want instead of what God wants. When we start to become self-centered, we begin to think that we know how to run our life better than God does. It becomes easy to sin when we are not continually seeking to keep our mind, will, and emotions directed toward God.
"All God's attributes are inseparably joined: they cannot be divided, no, not for a moment," said John Wesley, founder of Methodism. He taught that God's attributes will never contradict each other. Accordingly, we will never have to worry about God overreacting, or doing something contradictory to one of his attributes. God's attributes exist in harmony with each other.
This emphasis on the unity of God's attributes is a strength of the Wesleyan-Arminian system. Other theological systems will probably affirm that they hold all the attributes of God in balance, but in reality, most of them emphasize one attribute at the expense of another. For instance, many Neo-Calvinists exalt the love and graciousness of God at the expense of God's holiness. If they did not, they would not make statements such as: "Once you are saved, it doesn't matter what you do as far as your eternal salvation is concerned. God only sees the blood of Jesus. He doesn't see your sin." That view is certainly emphasizing the love and grace of God at the expense of His holiness.
At the same time, 5-point Calvinists emphasize the role of God as sovereign King more than God's role as loving Father. John Calvin, with his strict view of sovereignty, tended to say little of God's fatherly love. John Wesley, however, emphasized the role of God as loving Father. Though God is certainly seen as King and Judge, His justice is situated in a better balance with His love. As loving Father to all His creation (in one sense), God is not going to pass over most of his condemned human creatures and only provide a way of salvation for a select few, as the Calvinists believe.
God's transcendence (His being utterly distinct from His creation) and God’s immanence (His being present in His creation) are also attributes that must be held in careful balance with each other. Overemphasizing transcendence may result in deism, a belief in a God unconcerned with human affairs. Overemphasing immanence may result in pantheism, a belief that everything is God. But both immanence and transcendence are true at the same time. The holy, transcendent God before whom we fall in worship is the same God we invite into our hearts to be our personal friend.
God’s holiness, love, sovereignty, transcendence, immanence, and the rest of His attributes must all be seen in harmony and balance. For God’s attributes cannot be divided, “no, not for a moment.”
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