Free Grace theology was what I grew up with as a Conservative Baptist pastor’s kid. We didn’t call it that, but that is, effectively, what it was. Later Zane Hodges, as a counter to John MacArthur’s Gospel According to Jesus, would write his book: Absolutely Free. He simply codified what many of us in that sphere had lived with, soteriologically, for our whole Christian lives. Essentially Free Grace theology is the notion that all that is required for salvation is that you simply believe in Jesus Christ, and once you do that you are eternally secure and eternally saved/justified before God. It is generally a non-Calvinist, what some used to call biblicist way of thinking soteriology; clearly coming out of a style of conversionist, revivalist, and even Kesweckian piety and spirituality.

Free Grace contrasts with something like Five Point Calvinism, which of course MacArthur’s ‘Gospel According to Jesus’ is. Contrary to Five Point Calvinism, Free Grace argues that salvation doesn’t require ‘repentance’ as a condition of salvation; it argues that a person is eternally secure (without so-called ‘good works’); it makes the distinction between salvation and disciple (so a hard distinction between justification and sanctification), which entails the notion that there are such things as ‘carnal Christians’; it argues that the warning passages in the New Testament pointed towards Christians aren’t referring to loss of salvation (which both Calvinists and Arminians take them as), but to loss of reward (which also includes loss of ruling and reigning with Christ during the millennium). There are other distinctions, but those are the primary ones. You might be able to see how this would differ from a Five Point Calvinism of the type that someone like JMac would endorse.

But how would an Evangelical Calvinism dovetail, or not, with Free Grace soteriology? I think there are many points of contact between an Evangelical Calvinism and Free Grace theology, but it requires the person to put on their theology thinking caps. Evangelical Calvinism, like Free Grace, sees salvation purely grounded in the promise and person of Jesus Christ. We, like Free Grace, do not see any conditions for salvation other than simply placing your faith in Jesus Christ. Once this has obtained a person is indeed eternally secure, and assured of salvation, simply because they are now in union with the One who is indeed secure, and eternal life in Himself. Once this Rubicon (from being lost to found) has been crossed, the impossibility of “losing” salvation would be as great as the eternal Son no longer being the incarnate man from Nazareth.

And yet the Evangelical Calvinist, or Athanasian Reformed, goes to a depth dimension in a way that Free Grace doesn’t. An Evangelical Calvinism grounds salvation in the person and work of Jesus Christ. So we don’t see salvation as something we “acquire,” but as a person, God the Son, who has acquired us in His gracious assumption of humanity (assumptio carnis). We press into the idea, into the logic of the homoousion, that Christ’s humanity is vicarious humanity for all. This results, further, in the idea that Christ first believed for us by the Spirit in His humanity, as archetypal humanity, such that when we say Yes, and not No, to salvation we are only echoing His Yes and amen for us. An Evangelical Calvinist anchors salvific belief in God’s salvific belief for us; this would be something of an ordo salutis for us. This might help clarify how an Evangelical Calvinism isn’t at necessary odds with Free Grace soteriology, but it also should indicate how we texture and deepen things on the theological side in ways that a Free Grace thinker might not. If I was still pure Free Grace I don’t think I would look at what I am communicating here and conclude that it is at odds with my position as a Free Grace thinker, but it might make me wonder about the hermeneutic an Evangelical Calvinist is using juxtaposed with my own as a Free Gracer.

One stark difference, because an Evangelical Calvinism doesn’t make a hard distinction between justification/sanctification, that is, not in the way that Free Grace does, this might represent a point of departure for the Free Gracer. I should qualify and say, an Evangelical Calvinism does make a distinction between justification and sanctification (we are Protestant after all), but that along with Calvin’s duplex gratia (double grace) soteriology, which sees Jesus alone embodying both justification and sanctification for us, we see the whole enchilada as grounded in Christ’s vicarious life for us. The guarantee of both of these realities obtaining, was actualized first in the life of Christ for us. It is as we come into union with Him, participate with Him that its reality becomes apparent as we keep in step with the Spirit in Him as we live out our Christian existences as disciples of Jesus Christ. We might say it like this: the justification Jesus has won for us in His vicarious humanity is the ground upon which sanctification is pollinated from as we either submit to Him, or don’t, even as Christian people. Again, this could be parsed in a way that is not at odds with Free Grace soteriology.

In the end, an Evangelical Calvinism and Free Grace theology have more in common, by way of mood, than not. We reject the juridical or forensic emphases that fund Five Point Calvinist soteriology. We emphasize that it is God for us in Jesus Christ, personally, that stands as the basis for a sound understanding of soteriology (contra the decretum absolutum of Calvinism). We are both prone towards thinking God in very warm-hearted and pietistic-relational ways. It’s just that I think an Evangelical Calvinism ends up being much more theologically developed and open that way than is a Free Grace theology (which is very biblicist by orientation). And maybe I’m being a little more charitable towards Free Grace than they would be towards me; maybe I’m a bit sentimental. I could offer a harder critique of Free Grace, probably, but I think the things I’ve hit upon here reflect areas that we might have certain general commonalities on. One critique I might make of Free Grace would be that their entire hermeneutic stands or falls on a dispensational hermeneutic being the correct one (which implicates the way they develop their understanding of rewards and ruling and reigning with Jesus Christ during the millennium). I might also critique them for what I take to be an inherent dualism that plagues not just them, but of course the classical Calvinists, Arminians, and the whole of the Latin theological tradition. But I won’t make those critiques here, I’m being charitable. 🙂

Anyway, just some free floating thoughts on what Free Grace theology is (after Zane Hodges), and how an Evangelical Calvinism may or may not cohere with it at certain levels.