I’ve always loved history. Tracing the history of ideas is an important part of doing theology—not the most essential part, but still significant.
All ideas have a “family history”—an intellectual genealogy. Having a history doesn’t make them true or false (that would be a “genetic fallacy”). But knowing the history can give you a better idea of why you believe the way you do or why people argue about it.
For example, have you ever wondered how “assurance of salvation” became a key topic in Evangelical circles? It’s not really because the Bible debates it. Instead, according to Stanley Grenz, you can blame the Puritans!
Here’s the background.
You may remember that the Puritans were English Protestants in the 16th and 17th centuries who believed the English Reformation hadn’t gone far enough. They objected to Roman Catholic influences in the Church of England and wanted a purer church with purer doctrine (hence the name “Puritan”). Thus, they separated to form independent or dissenting congregations, with many fleeing to Holland and then to New England looking for religious freedom (at least for themselves, if not for others).
As Grenz explains, the Puritans were concerned with “the quest for certainty of personal election” (Grenz, Revisioning Evangelical Theology, p. 23). They wanted to be sure that they were saved. Why was that? Why did that become an area of particular doubt for them?
Simply put, it was due to the doubts created by their Calvinism:
“This movement developed a new kind of piety in response to anxieties produced by the Calvinist doctrine of election, which in Puritanism made the problem of assurance of salvation existentially central. In contrast to medieval paradigms, Calvinism couched the question of personal salvation in terms of God’s mysterious election. While this theology protected divine sovereignty, it offered no clear criteria whereby a believer could be assured of elect status” (Revisioning, p. 39).
As Grenz explains, many tried to ground their certainty of being elect in outward behavior, which had the opposite effect:
“As helpful as they may be, in the end no sincerity of profession of faith, no degree of faithful attendance at the sacraments, no accumulation of outward evidences of sanctified living could suffice as marks of election” (Grenz, Revisioning, p. 39).
Since looking at outward behavior didn’t give them the assurance they sought, the Puritans looked for inward evidence. Grenz continues:
“the Puritans did devise one definitive mark of election: the inward experience of God’s saving grace. The attendant emphasis on conversion that this move engendered led eventually—at least in devotional literature—to an emphasis on a subjective mark of salvation, the inner, conscious experience of the new birth. Assurance of elect status, therefore, became the product of a believer’s ability to narrate a testimony to a personal conversion experience” (Grenz, Revisioning, p. 39).
This emphasis on having a “new birth” conversion experience became one of the central features of preaching during the Great Awakenings in America. Men like John Wesley (representing Arminians) and George Whitfield (representing Calvinists) emphasized the necessity of conversion and having “the New Birth.” People who had that experience during the revival meetings began to distinguish themselves from people who hadn’t, leading to the question, “Are you really saved?”
That language and expectation became part of the DNA of American Evangelical Christianity and part of the history of why it became controversial in our circles (the more immediate reasons why assurance became controversial in our circles will have to wait for a future blog).
Send your questions or comments to Shawn.
