The Lordship salvation dispute opposes two soteriological visions: "whether it is necessary to accept Christ as Lord in order to have Him as one's Savior. The question then becomes, If someone accepts Christ as Savior without also explicitly accepting Him as Lord, is such a person truly saved?". That is, whether accepting Jesus Christ as saviour necessarily implies one must make a concrete commitment in life toward the Christ such as following a certain behaviour or moral system. The first opinion, that of the lordship salvation supporters, is, as Arthur W. Pink summarises: "No one can receive Christ as His Savior while he rejects Him as Lord. Therefore, those who have not bowed to Christ’s scepter and enthroned Him in their hearts and lives, and yet imagine that they are trusting Him as Savior, are deceived". The second opinion is that of those opposing lordship salvation: that one can accept Jesus Christ as saviour, but does not need to accept the Christ's lordship. [16]
Modern Controversy
An early discussion about the initial conversion aspect of the Lordship salvation issue was in the 1948 systematic theology of Lewis Sperry Chafer, using (and criticizing) the phrase "believe and surrender to God". [20] A.W. Pink, also used this language, but anticipated (and advocated) key terms in the later debate, speaking of both 'surrender' and 'Lordship'. [21] Connection of the word "Lordship" and salvation existed in a Ph.D. dissertation at Wheaton College in 1958. [22] Therefore, the use of the term 'Lordship salvation' came before the first edition of MacArthur's 1988 book, [23] possibly after the 1959 debate in Eternity magazine, Sep 1959, between Presbyterian Everett F. Harrison, a professor at Fuller Theological Seminary, and John Stott, an Anglican theologian. In 1959, Eternity featured a twin set of articles [24] [25] which ignited the debate [26] and the use of the idiom from the titles: what Christ must "be." Ten years later (1969), Charles Ryrie used this idiom in a chapter title, verbatim, [27] quoting exactly the title of the articles in Eternity Magazine, September, 1959. This idiom, what Christ must "be", was used to derive and discuss the implications for salvation associated with what Christ is. One author, Arthur W. Pink (1886–1952), had already associated Christ's Lordship with surrendering to it as a sine qua non at the initial point. [21]
In 1988, John F. MacArthur Jr published the first edition of The Gospel According to Jesus. [28] By defining salvation by what it produces and what salvation will not fail to produce, (not only glorification, but good works, repentance, faith, sanctification, yieldedness, and obedience) the book not only heavily spread the extent of the debate, but the debate expanded in scope, from questions about conversion issues, to questions about what is also necessary, and who it is who does what, throughout the Christian life. Using surrender language in the gospel became another issue.
Free Grace theology became an umbrella term for a variety of opposing or contrasting positions, sometimes arguing that Lordship salvation was legalistic, sometimes more opposed to it than that, for example, faulting it for not being specific about what degree, quality, and current visibility there must be to the necessary obedience. [31] Figures of the Reformed tradition and their historical dispute with Arminian Protestants over a person's participatory role in salvation, a debate which many Calvinists identify with the original sin issue Augustine wrote of in his polemics against the British monk Pelagius, gave Reformed scholars and church leaders an intellectual tradition from which to oppose what they considered a false gospel. [32]
Modern advocates of Lordship salvation include individuals such as John MacArthur [4] , John Piper [3] , R. C Sproul [2] , John Stott [33] , B.B. Warfield [33] , Arthur W. Pink [1] , John Gerstner [2] , Matthew Slick [34] , and Kenneth Gentry [35] . A similar controversy was caused by the Neonomianism of Richard Baxter, to which Lordship salvation has been compared. [36] [37]
Opposing beliefs
The Lordship salvation has gained opposition from some Reformed theologians such as R. Scott Clark, [38] [39] Free Grace theologians such as Charles Ryrie and Zane Hodges [40] [41] along with from those who belong to the so-called "Hyper-Grace" movement such as Andrew Farley. [42] Critics of Lordship salvation generally argue that it makes assurance impossible, [43] often arguing that it is inconsistent with salvation by faith alone. [42] [44] Other critics, such as Ryrie and Hodges, further argue that Lordship salvation is a false gospel, which cannot save, and that the position repeats the Galatian error. [35] Reformed critics of Lordship salvation such as R. Scott Clark, who is a Reformed seminary professor at Westminster Seminary California, have argued that the doctrine of Lordship salvation does not accurately reflect the Reformation understanding of justification, claiming that it repeats aspects of the medieval understanding of justification which the Reformers rejected. [38] [39] Although Scott Clark rejects Lordship salvation, he also rejected the Free Grace views held by Hodges, arguing that it is an antinomian reaction to the moralism that has developed in the church. [45]
