I've been studying several good books in preparation for preaching and teaching this semester. For preaching, I've been reading The Death of Death in the Death of Christ, which is John Owen's powerful defense of God's complete sovereignty in the salvation of man. God ordained that this topic coincide with our Bible study topic this week, the doctrine of election. Dewayne, Nisha, Selena, and I have been using Wayne Grudem's Bible Doctrine to prepare for leading our students through the foundational doctrines of Scripture. Here's a helpful quote from Wayne Grudem which clarifies the "different emphases" of Calvinism and Arminianism:
Both [Calvinists and Arminians] must say that there is something else that God deems more important than saving everyone. Reformed theologians [Calvinists] say that God deems his own glory more important than saving everyone, and that (according to Rom. 9) God's glory is also furthered by the fact that some are not saved. Arminian theologians also say that something else is more important to God than the salvation of all people, namely, the preservation of man's free will. So in a Reformed system, God's highest value is his own glory, and in an Arminian system, God's highest value is the free will of man. These are two distinctly different conceptions of God's nature, and it seems that the Reformed position has much more explicit biblical support than the Arminian position does on this question.
Grudem is accurate and concise, which is helpful for slow minds like mine, but he's often clinical and timid (e.g., "it seems that the Reformed position…"). John Owen, on the other hand, is manly and direct, which is to say he is pastoral and sounds a lot more like the apostles and the prophets. See for yourself (I've taken out the Latin interjections, slightly updated archaic English grammar, and added some notes about his allusions):
And here, secondly, free-will, corrupted nature’s deformed darling, the Pallas1 or beloved self-conception of darkened minds, finds open hearts and arms for its adulterous embraces; yea, the die being cast, and Rubicon passed over,2 that having opposed the free distinguishing grace of God as the sole sworn enemy thereof, it advances itself, or an inbred native ability in every one to embrace a portion of generally exposed mercy, under the name of free grace. This, this is Universalists'3 free grace, which in the Scripture phrase is cursed, corrupted nature. Neither can it otherwise be. A general ransom without free-will is but "a burdensome fancy"; the merit of the death of Christ being to them as an ointment in a box, that has neither virtue nor power to act or reach out its own application unto particulars, being only set out in the gospel to the view of all, that those who will, by their own strength, lay hold on it and apply it to themselves may be healed. Hence the dear esteem and high valuation which this old idol free-will hath attained in these days, being so useful to the general ransom that it cannot live a day without it. Should it pass for true what the Scripture affirms, namely, that we are by nature "dead in trespasses and sins" [Ephesians 2:1], there would not be left of the general ransom a shred to take fire from the hearth. Like the wood of the vine, it would not yield a pin to hang a garment upon.…But here, as though all the undertakings and Babylonish attempts of the old Pelagians,4 with their varnished offspring, the late Arminians, were slight and easy, I shall show you greater abominations than these, and farther discoveries of the imagery of the hearts of the sons of men. In pursuance of this persuasion of universal redemption, not a few have arrived (whither it naturally leads them) to deny the satisfaction and merit of Christ.
1 Probably a reference to Pallas, a prominent Greek freedman and adviser to Emperor Claudius. He encouraged the marriage between Claudius and his (Pallas's) own mistress, Agrippina, who also happened to be Claudius's niece.
2 A metaphor meaning to pass a point of no return, alluding the Julius Caesar's seizure of power by illegally crossing the Rubicon river into Italy with a legion of armed soldiers. Julius is reported to have done so while quoting the Greek playwright Menander: "the die is cast."
3 I.e., not those who believe in a universal salvation, but those who believe that Christ died for the sins of all men, and assert that the application of Christ's death ultimately depends on each person's free choice (the doctrine of salvation advanced by Arminian theology).
4 I.e., those who believed that original sin did not taint man's free will to choose good or evil, a heresy named after Pelagius, a theologian of the 4th and 5th century.
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