Summary
Moral government theology (MGT), rooted in the philosophical
definition of freedom as the "power of contrary choice,"
denies the fundamental Christian doctrines of God's perfection
in knowledge, goodness, and power; original sin; human moral inability;
the substitutionary satisfaction of God's justice in Christ's
atoning death; redemption; and justification by the crediting
of Christ's righteousness to believers by grace through faith
apart from works. As documented in this article, these denials
are unbiblical and are so serious as to warrant classifying MGT
as non-Christian.
Judy was a former missionary whose faith had collapsed; she no longer
believed that God was unchangeably good or faithful or that He even
knew all of the future. George (both names have been changed) was
another former missionary who ardently rejected the historic belief
that Adam's sin and guilt are shared in by the whole human race. What
tied the two together? Both had been taught the same doctrinal system
in training with a popular youth mission organization in the 1970s.
In one, it brought depression; in the other, pride. Both effects,
strangely enough, were fitting.
Since the 1960s, a new heretical theology has been infiltrating evangelical
circles. Not officially embraced by any well-known denomination
or parachurch organization, the system has nevertheless made serious
inroads into at least one large and well-known missions organization
and has spawned a ministry and publication dedicated to its promotion
and defense.1 This system of doctrine is paradoxically
old and new: its elements are old,2 but the manner in which
they are tied together into a complete structure is new.
THE RISE OF MORAL GOVERNMENT THEOLOGY
The system's major proponents dub it moral government theology. But
today's moral government theology is a far cry from what went by that
name two centuries ago, when people as diverse as Jonathan Edwards
(a firm Calvinist) and John Wesley (a firm Arminian) both used it
to refer to God's government of moral agents through His moral law
as contrasted with His government of the physical creation through
physical law.
Contemporary moral government theology is principally the brainchild
of the late Gordon C. Olson. During the 1930s and 1940s, Olson's studies
led him to believe that God's foreknowledge is necessarily limited
by human free will and that the classical doctrines of original sin,
human depravity and moral inability, the Atonement, and justification
were as wrong as the classical doctrine of absolute foreknowledge.
During the 1960s and 1970s, Olson and an engineering associate of
his named Harry Conn began to teach moral government theology for
various mission organizations, often in recruiting, motivating, or
training young people. Moral government theology (hereafter MGT) first
began to spread rapidly when Olson and Conn became regular speakers
for Youth With A Mission (YWAM), which has since become one of the
larger youth missionary organizations in the world. Contrary to YWAM's
repeated denials that MGT was an important part of its teaching, it
was in YWAM training that tens of thousands of students from the late
1970s through the 1980s, and some even into the 1990s, learned MGT
(although today some YWAM leaders speak against MGT).3
Although Conn and others have published on MGT,4 Olson's
writings and taped lectures have been definitive of the system and
the most important influence in the movement.5 For that
reason, most of this analysis will focus on Olson's writings.6
ROOT AND BRANCHES
At the root of MGT lies a philosophical assumption about freedom.
According to Olson, "the power to the contrary is essential to
free agency A free moral agent may
always act contrary to any influence, not destructive to his freedom,
that may be brought to bear upon him."7 Indeed, "voluntary
responsible action involves the possibility of non-compliance or of
contrary choice the freedom of uncertainty. Virtuous action must
be voluntary action. If no contrary choice, then no virtuous choice...."8
No choice may be called virtuous, then, unless the one who made it
might just as well have chosen the opposite. Add to this philosophical
definition of freedom the assertion that God and man are inherently
free, and important doctrines necessarily follow.
First, man is born morally neutral and is always capable of
choosing whether to sin. Olson insists that "holiness and sin
are free voluntary acts of will or states of mind, and, although strongly
influenced, are not caused by any internal force of nature, tendency,
or instinct"; that "sin is not...an abstract thing which
invades and lodges somewhere in our personalities, but is rather an
orderly sequence of wrong choices and conduct"; that "depravity
strongly influences, but does not compel, toward wrong action. We
choose to follow our inclinations when we sin"; that "moral
depravity...is always a voluntary development which results from the
wrong choices of our wills"; that "the universality of sin
in the world is not to be accounted for, therefore, by some fixed
causation in our personality inherited by birth"; and that "so-called
inability is a question of 'will not' rather than 'cannot' obey God's
reasonable requirements."9
Each person is hence condemned only for his or her own sin.
For Olson, "a contradiction would exist in the Bible if any statement
could be found declaring our guilt for Adam's sin."10
In his view, "if the Bible affirmed that we are held accountable
for other's (sic) sins, and particularly for Adam's sin, this
would become such a gross injustice in the economy of God as to erect
a barrier to intelligent thought and the meaning of guilt."11
Why? Because "all sin consists in sinning
there can be no moral character but in moral acts."12
Second, man's future free choices cannot be foreknown by God; if they
were then they would no longer be free. The "future choices of
moral beings," Olson writes, "when acting freely in their
moral agency, have not been brought into existence as yet and thus
are not fixities or objects of possible knowledge."13
Thus, "many Bible passages, when taken in their natural meaning,
appear to indicate that God does not have absolute foreknowledge over
all his own future actions, nor over all those of His moral creatures."14
Therefore God's foreknowledge is limited, and He learns new things
as people make choices.
Third, the principle of contrary choice "applies to actions of
the Godhead as well as to the self-caused actions of men."15
Therefore: (1) God cannot foreknow His own future choices, for if
He did then He would not make those choices freely, and He would cease
to be a moral agent. (2) God's moral character, like man's, depends
constantly on His choices: "Moral attributes involve the element
of choice, or have a voluntary causation to them. They are not natural
attributes in that they are not endowments of God's existence, but
are moral in the sense that they are the result of a disposition of
will. They exist because each Member of the Godhead perpetually
chooses that they should be so. Moral character must be an active
something. It cannot be a static fixity of some sort back of the will,
causing its actions" (emphasis added).16 Hence, the
absolutely unfettered will, not the moral nature, lies at the root
of God's (or any moral agent's) choices and character. This follows
necessarily from Olson's first principle, already cited: "Voluntary
responsible action involves the possibility of non-compliance or of
contrary choice the freedom of uncertainty....If
no contrary choice, then no virtuous choice...."17
The shocking implication of this last idea
that God is morally changeable might
appear to contradict another of Olson's statements: "God's nature
and moral character imposes limitations. God is able to do whatever
He wills (except with moral beings [sic]), but His will is
limited to doing those things which are in harmony with His wise and
holy and perfect character. God cannot do things contrary to Himself.
This is not a defect in Divine omnipotence but a perfection of the
Divine Being."18
But Olson chooses his terms carefully. "Moral character,"
he says, "is dynamic; it is the whole personality in action;
it is what we are doing with our endowments or abilities of personality
and the moral understanding which we possess."19 If
it is true that Olson believes that God's "will is limited
to doing those things which are in harmony with His wise and holy
and perfect character" (emphasis added),20
it is also true that Olson believes God's character "cannot
be a static fixity of some sort back of the will, causing its actions,"
but "is the whole personality in action; it is what [God is]
doing with [His] endowments or abilities of personality and the moral
understanding which [He] possess[es]."21
As Olson puts it, "the will determines the nature or character,
rather than the nature the will" (emphasis added).22
Should God ever choose to make His character other than wise and holy
and perfect and no "internal
force of nature" can prevent His doing so
then of course that wise and holy and perfect character will no longer
limit what He wills; a different sort of character will do so. To
put it simply, we have no assurance that God will not decide
tomorrow to become the Devil.
Not only God's knowledge and moral character but even His power
collapses before the inexorable implications of human autonomy in
MGT. Olson hints at this in a parenthetical phrase in his statement
of the limits on God's will, cited above: "God is able to do
whatever He wills (except with moral beings), but His will
is limited to doing those things which are in harmony with His wise
and holy and perfect character" (emphasis added).23
He makes it explicit when he writes, "Man as an endowed moral
being has been given the ability to limit the omnipotence of God
in his sphere of life. Mankind by their rebellion against God and
their obstinacy in refusing the mercy and forgiveness through the
atoning death of Christ have imposed very great limitations upon God's
will and happiness....God in creating moral creatures with the
power of contrary choice made this a possibility" (emphasis
added).24
The implications of these ideas do not end here. They yield a whole
new understanding of justification and salvation as well. Since Olson
explicitly denies that man inherits sin or guilt from Adam (i.e.,
he denies the doctrine of original sin
the imputation of Adam's sin and guilt to his posterity), it should
come as no surprise that he also denies the imputation of Christ's
righteousness to believers. He finds the cause of salvation not in
Christ's atoning death but in the believer's self-reformation: "Romans
5:12-19 does not establish the dogma of the literal imputation of
Adam's sin to all his posterity, but merely affirms in a parallelism
that just as Adam's sin was the occasion, not cause, of the voluntary
disobedience of all men, so Christ is the occasion, not cause, of
the salvation offered to all men."25 "The active
obedience or holiness of Christ," Olson says, "is not legally
imputed to the believer."26 And if Christ's righteousness
is not credited to the believer, neither is the believer's sin credited
to Christ on the cross. For sin is not a principle; sins are isolated,
individual acts only.
But if our sins are not borne by Christ on the cross, how are we to
be freed from the penalty due them? Ah, the question assumes that
a penalty is due, but none is! "A voluntary disposition of mercy
and forgiveness prevails equally among all the Members of the Godhead.
The Godhead is without personal vindictiveness. The problems of forgiveness
are not personal but governmental. God does not require an exact payment
for sin to satisfy retributive justice, but only requires that
an atonement shall satisfy public justice and all the problems
of a full and free reconciliation in His government of moral beings."27
This denial of any demand for the satisfaction of retributive (or
"vindictive") justice in God leads Olson to deny that Christ's
atoning death was the true payment of a penalty to satisfy that justice:
The sacrifice of Christ is not the payment of a debt, nor is it
a complete satisfaction of justice for sin. It is a Divinely-appointed
[sic] condition which precedes the forgiveness of sin....Christ's
sufferings took the place of a penalty, so that His sufferings
have the same effect in reconciling God to man, and procuring the
forgiveness of sin, that the sinner's endurance of the punishment
due to his sins would have had. The sufferings of Christ were not
a substituted penalty, but a substitute for a penalty (emphasis
added).28
The atonement of Christ "rendered satisfaction to public justice
(a demonstration before all that rebellion against authority will
be punished), as distinguished from retributive or vindictive justice."29
Here, then, is MGT in a nutshell:
(1) Freedom entails the power of contrary choice, and God and man
are both free.
(2) God is finite, imperfect, and changeable in His knowledge, character,
and power, and He does not require vengeance for sin.
(3) Man is perfectly free, which implies that he cannot have inherited
either sin or a morally corrupt nature from Adam, and his freedom
necessarily limits God's knowledge, will, and power.
(4) The gospel is that "the atoning death of Christ,"
as Olson deigns to call it nay,
even Christ Himself "is the
occasion, not cause, of the salvation offered to all men."30
The "consequences of right and wrong moral action" in
MGT "are based solely upon personal merit or demerit
as known only to God" and "are and will be in exact accord
or in proportion to merit and demerit" (emphasis added).31
By defining freedom as the "power of contrary choice,"
Olson is forced ultimately to deny nearly the whole defining body
of Christian faith: original sin, unregenerate man's moral inability,
the imputation of Christ's righteousness in justification (parallel
to the imputation of Adam's sin in condemnation), the substitutionary
and satisfactory atonement for sin in Christ's death, and the moral
and intellectual infinity, perfection, and immutability of God. And
Olson reaches his conclusions not on the basis of Scripture but by
inferences from philosophical assumptions. What might Olson have found
had he subjected his first principle and his inferences to the light
of Scripture?
HUMAN FREEDOM AND SIN IN SCRIPTURE
Scripture knows nothing of freedom as the "power of contrary
choice." Real freedom is not autonomy but deliverance from
the slavery to sin in which all humans are born, into the glorious
freedom of the children of God: "But thanks be to God that though
you were slaves of sin, you became obedient from the heart
to that form of teaching to which you were committed, and having been
freed from sin, you became slaves of righteousness" (Rom.
6:17-18, emphases added). Try as he might, man never can escape being
Number Two he must always be someone's
slave. The serpent's trickery was to make Adam and Eve think that
by disobeying God they could begin to rule their own lives
they could be Number One. Instead, rejecting God's rule only meant
embracing Satan's (Eph. 2:2). "But now having been freed from
sin and enslaved to God, you derive your benefit, resulting in sanctification,
and the outcome, eternal life. For the wages of sin is death, but
the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord"
(Rom. 6:22-23).
Far from human freedom being the "power of contrary choice,"
the very exercise of that power robbed human beings of the only freedom
for which we were made: the freedom of obedience to our rightful Sovereign.
And no "power of contrary choice" in us will ever free us
from sin's tyranny, for we are "dead in trespasses and sins"
and "by nature children of wrath" (Eph. 2:1, 3). We suffer,
as Luther put it in the title of one of his most famous books, from
The Bondage of the Will; our wills are bound to our corrupt,
rebellious, sinful nature inherited from Adam.32
What we need is not a free will but a new, holy, obedient, righteous
nature (2 Cor. 5:17) to which our will can be bound. And we cannot
produce that new nature for ourselves least of all by an act of our own will, which is
bound by the contrary nature. Dead, rebellious humans do not
cannot repent, believe, and
reform their lives.
But God, being rich in mercy, because of His great love with which
He loved us, even when we were dead in our transgressions,
made us alive together with Christ (by grace you have been saved),
and raised us up with Him, and seated us with Him in the heavenly
places, in Christ Jesus, in order that in the ages to come He might
show the surpassing riches of His grace in kindness toward us in
Christ Jesus. For by grace you have been saved through faith; and
that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God; not as a result of
works, that no one should boast. For we are His workmanship, created
in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that
we should walk in them. (Eph. 2:4-10, emphasis added)
DIVINE KNOWLEDGE, HOLINESS, AND JUSTICE IN
SCRIPTURE
Far from divine freedom being the "power of contrary choice,"
God's freedom is precisely that He never will or even can do anything
contrary to His holy and good nature. "Thou art good and
doest good" (Ps. 119:68). That is why God "cannot
lie" (Titus 1:2); why we know that His promise and His purpose
are "unchangeable" and therefore that "it is impossible
for God to lie" (Heb. 6:17-18); why God could rest His assurance
to Israel on His own immutability when He said, "For I, the LORD,
do not change; therefore you, O sons of Jacob, are not consumed"
(Mal. 3:6); why we can be comforted to know that "if we are faithless,
He remains faithful; for He cannot deny Himself" (2 Tim. 2:13;
cf. Num. 23:19).
Like His moral nature, so also God's knowledge is perfect, admitting
no increase or improvement. "God...knows all things" (1
John 3:20) not just some things;
not all things except those that "have not been brought
into existence as yet and thus are not fixities or objects of possible
knowledge" (Olson's description of the future choices of free
moral agents).33 The God who "calls those things which
do not exist as though they did" (Rom. 4:17) "knows all
things." Nothing can be hid from God (Ps. 139:11-12; Heb. 4:13).
"His understanding is infinite" (Ps. 147:5). Hence God's
knowledge can never increase (Isa. 40:13-14), for it is already all-comprehensive:
(1) in space (2 Chron. 16:9; Ps. 139:1-2, 6-10); (2) in time (Ps.
139:15-16; Isa. 41:21-26; John 13:19); (3) in scope, including all
things from the greatest to the least (Ps. 139:2-4; 147:4; Job 31:4;
Matt. 10:30); and (4) not only in things actual (what is or will
be) but also in things contingent (what could be, under
any circumstances, real or not) (1 Sam. 23:10-13; Ps. 81:13-16; Jer.
38:17-18, cf. 19-23; Matt. 11:20-24).
This God of infinite and unchangeable knowledge and holiness is also
a God of perfect justice who, contrary to Olson, does demand
vengeance on sin: "I, the LORD your God, am a jealous God, visiting
the iniquity of the fathers on the children, on the third and the
fourth generations of those who hate Me..." (Exod. 20:5, cf.
20:7; Deut. 29:19-20; 32:35; Josh. 24:19-20; Nah. 1:2-3; Rom. 12:19).
THE GOSPEL OF REDEMPTION AND JUSTIFICATION
Thank God that although "all have sinned and fall short of the
glory of God," we are "justified as a gift by His grace
through the redemption which is in Christ Jesus; whom God displayed
publicly as a propitiation [i.e., satisfaction of man's
debt to God's outraged holiness] in His blood through faith. This
was to demonstrate His righteousness, because in the forbearance of
God He passed over the sins previously committed; for the demonstration,
I say, of His righteousness at the present time, that He might be
just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus" (Rom.
3:23-26, emphasis added).
This redemption by Christ is truly a payment of our penalty
for sin, Olson's denials notwithstanding: "You were not redeemed
with perishable things...but with precious blood, as of a lamb unblemished
and spotless, the blood of Christ" (1 Pet. 1:18-19). "The
Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give His
life a ransom for many" (Matt. 20:28). "In Him we have redemption
through His blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to
the riches of His grace" (Eph. 1:7). The Holy Spirit "is
given as a pledge of our inheritance, with a view to the redemption
of God's own possession" (Eph. 1:14). Christ "gave Himself
for us, that He might redeem us from every lawless deed" (Titus
2:14). For this reason Christ is praised: "Worthy art Thou to
take the book, and to break its seals; for Thou wast slain, and didst
purchase for God with Thy blood men from every tribe and tongue and
people and nation" (Rev. 5:9).
In His atoning death, Christ truly substituted Himself for us in bearing
the penalty for our sins: "But He was pierced through for our
transgressions, He was crushed for our iniquities; the chastening
for our well-being fell upon Him, and by His scourging we are healed"
(Isa. 53:5). He was offered up "to bear the sins of many"
(Heb. 9:28), "the just for the unjust" {that is, the just
"in the stead of, as a substitute for" the unjust34}
(1 Pet. 3:18), "a ransom35 for36 all"
who would be saved (1 Tim. 2:6).
Just as surely as He gave Himself to bear our sins, Christ also gives
us the gift of His righteousness:
For if by the transgression of the one, death reigned through the
one, much more those who receive the abundance of grace and of the
gift of righteousness will reign in life through the One, Jesus
Christ. So then as through one transgression there resulted condemnation
to all men, even so through one act of righteousness there resulted
justification of life to all men. For as through the one man's disobedience
the many were made sinners, even so through the obedience of the
One the many will be made righteous. (Rom. 5:17-19)
And we obtain this gift of righteousness not by works but solely
by faith: "I count all things to be loss in view of the surpassing
value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whom I have suffered the
loss of all things, and count them but rubbish in order that I may
gain Christ, and may be found in Him, not having a righteousness of
my own derived from the Law, but that which is through faith in Christ,
the righteousness which comes from God on the basis of faith"
(Phil. 3:8-9; cf. Rom. 4:3-6).
MINOR ABERRATION OR DEPARTURE FROM THE FAITH?
Proponents of MGT often depict opposition to it as rooted in "hyper-Calvinism,"
claiming that their doctrines are nothing but Wesleyan Arminianism,
which is recognized in evangelical circles as a nonheretical option
in theology. Not so.
Neither Wesley nor Arminius would ever have dreamed of denying God's
absolute and infinite foreknowledge or His unchangeable goodness.
Wesley boldly defended God's foreknowledge in commenting on John 6:64,37
and both God's foreknowledge and His moral immutability in his sermon
on "Divine Providence."38 Moreover, he confidently
taught that Christ's "divine righteousness belongs to his divine
nature....Now this is his eternal, essential, immutable, holiness;
his infinite justice, mercy, and truth: in all which, He and the Father
are one" (emphasis added).39 And Arminius's words
rejecting the notion that God is freely good breathe fire:
[Some] brought forward an instance, or example, in which [they
alleged that] Necessity and Liberty met together; and that was God,
who is both necessarily and freely good. This assertion of theirs
displeased me so exceedingly, as to cause me to say, that it was
not far removed from blasphemy. At this time, I entertain
a similar opinion about it; and in a few words I thus prove its
falsity, absurdity, and the blasphemy [contained]
in the falsity....[T]he Christian Fathers justly attached
blasphemy to those who said, "the Father begat the Son willingly,
or by his own will;" because from this it would follow, that
the Son had [principium] an origin similar to that of the
creatures. But with how much greater equity does blasphemy fasten
itself upon those who declare, "that God is freely good!"
(emphases added)40
Both Wesley and Arminius clearly affirmed that all human beings (except
Christ) inherit the sin and guilt of Adam and therefore are naturally
bound to sin until regenerated by God. "This, therefore, is the
first grand distinguishing point between Heathenism and Christianity,"
wrote Wesley. He continued:
The one acknowledges that many men are infected with many vices,
and even born with a proneness to them; but supposes withal, that
in some the natural good much over balances the evil: the other
declares that all men are "conceived in sin," and "shapen
in wickedness" that hence
there is in every man a "carnal mind," which is enmity
against God; which is not, cannot be, subject to "his law";
which so infects the whole soul, that "there dwelleth in"
him "in his flesh," in his natural state, "no good
thing"; but "every imagination of the thoughts of his
heart is evil," only evil, and that "continually."
Hence we may learn that all who deny this, call it "original
sin," or by any other title, are but Heathens still, in the
fundamental point which differences Heathenism from Christianity....But
here is the shibboleth: Is man by nature filled with all manner
of evil? Is he void of all good? Is he wholly fallen? Is his soul
totally corrupted? Or, to come back to the text, is "every
imagination of the thoughts of his heart only evil continually?"
Allow this, and you are so far a Christian. Deny it, and you are
but a Heathen still.41
In like manner Arminius insisted:
The whole of this sin, however, is not peculiar to our first parents,
but is common to the entire race and to all their posterity, who,
at the time when this sin was committed, were in their loins, and
who have since descended from them by the natural mode of propagation,
according to the primitive benediction. For in Adam "all have
sinned." [Romans 5:12] Wherefore, whatever punishment was brought
down upon our first parents, has likewise pervaded and yet pursues
all their posterity. So that all men "are by nature the children
of wrath," [Ephesians 2:3]....42
Arminius wrote elsewhere that
in his lapsed and sinful state, man is not capable, of and
by himself, either to think, to will, or to do that which is really
good; but it is necessary for him to be regenerated and renewed
in his intellect, affections or will, and in all his powers, by
God in Christ through the Holy Spirit, that he may be qualified
rightly to understand, esteem, consider, will, and perform whatever
is truly good. When he is made a partaker of this regeneration or
renovation, I consider that, since he is delivered from sin, he
is capable of thinking, willing and doing that which is good, but
yet not without the continued aids of Divine Grace. (emphasis
added)43
Both Wesley and Arminius affirmed the substitutionary, penal satisfaction
doctrine of the atoning death of Christ. In commenting on Romans 3:25,
Wesley wrote that Christ's propitiatory sacrifice was made to "appease
an offended God. But if, as some teach, God never was offended, there
was no need of this propitiation. And if so, Christ died in vain."44
In explaining the priestly office of Christ, Arminius wrote that
by it God exercised both His love for humanity and His love for
justice, united to which is a hatred against sin. It was the will
of God that each of these kinds of love should be satisfied. He
gave satisfaction to his love for the creature who was a
sinner, when he gave up his Son who might act the part of Mediator.
But he rendered satisfaction to his love for justice and to his
hatred against sin, when he imposed on his Son the office of
Mediator by the shedding of his blood and by the suffering of death;
[Heb. 2:10; 5:8, 9] and he was unwilling to admit him as the Intercessor
for sinners except when sprinkled with his own blood, in which he
might be made [expiatio] the propitiation for sins. [Heb.
9:12]...In this respect also it may with propriety be said that
God rendered satisfaction to himself, and appeased himself in "the
Son of his love" (italicized emphases in original, boldfaced
emphases added).45
Both Wesley and Arminius affirmed that we are justified by God's
crediting the righteousness of Christ to our account as a gift through
faith apart from works. Commenting on Romans 5:14, Wesley wrote, "As
the sin of Adam, without the sins which we afterward committed, brought
us death; so the righteousness of Christ, without the good works which
we afterward performed, brings us life...."46 Arminius
similarly wrote, "I believe that sinners are accounted righteous
solely by the obedience of Christ; and that the righteousness of Christ
is the only meritorious cause on account of which God pardons the
sins of believers and reckons them as righteous as if they had perfectly
fulfilled the law."47
In each of these points, MGT stands in stark contradiction not only
to Arminius and Wesley but also to the great creeds and doctrinal
statements of every branch of Protestantism48 and, most
important, to Scripture. If Wesley, the great champion of Christian
tolerance and catholicity, could treat rejection of the doctrines
of original sin and moral inability as sufficient by itself to define
one as "a Heathen still," surely MGT, which makes not only
this grave error but also many others graver still, must be classified
not as a form of Christianity but as heathenism masquerading as Christianity.
E. Calvin Beisner is an associate professor of interdisciplinary studies
at Covenant College, Lookout Mountain, Georgia and a member of the
Theological Review Committee of The Coalition on Revival.
NOTES
1 Evangelistic Education Ministries (3625 Halsted Road,
Rockford, IL, 61101), publishers of Notes and Quotes, a newsletter
"proclaiming the Moral Government of God," edited by Dean
Harvey.
2 It combines some of the teachings of the fifth-century
monk Pelagius, who was opposed principally by Augustine and condemned
by the ecumenical councils of Carthage (a.d. 418) and Ephesus (a.d.
431), the 16th-century philosopher Faustus Socinus, the 19th-century
revivalist Charles G. Finney, and various others.
3 For thorough documentation that MGT has been a widespread
and often central element of YWAM training, see Alan W. Gomes,
Lead Us Not into Deception: A Biblical Examination of Moral Government
Theology, 3d rev. ed. (La Mirada, CA: published by the author,
1986), Appendices A and B. At least during the 1970s and the early
1980s, MGT was the dominant theological perspective at every YWAM
training base around the world that Gomes and I, with the help of
many contacts both inside and outside YWAM, were able to check. As
well, many of YWAM's most respected teachers, both on and off staff,
taught MGT, according to firsthand testimony by YWAM students.
4 E.g., Harry Conn, Four Trojan Horses (Nyack, NY:
Parson Publishing, 1978), especially chapter 3 and appendices 1 and
2; Harry Conn, ed., Finney's Systematic Theology (Minneapolis:
Bethany Fellowship, 1976); Howard Roy Elseth, Did God Know?
(St. Paul: Calvary United Church, 1977); Winkie Pratney, Youth
Aflame (n.p., 1970; rev. ed., Minneapolis: Bethany Fellowship,
1983); Winkie Pratney, The Nature and Character of God: The Magnificent
Doctrine of God in Understandable Language (Minneapolis: Bethany
Fellowship, 1988); George Otis, Jr., The God They Never Knew
(Van Nuys, CA: Bible Voice Publishers, 1978). Also important is the
tape series, "The Moral Government of God," by Harry Conn,
produced for some time by YWAM.
5 Most important among Olson's writings has been his evangelism
training manual, Sharing Your Faith: The 3 M's of Witnessing: The
Messenger, The Message, The Method, 4th rev. ed. (Chicago: Bible
Research Fellowship, 1976), republished with very little alteration
as The Truth Shall Make You Free (Franklin Park, IL: Bible
Research Fellowship, 1980). See also his 40-tape lecture series,
"The Messenger, the Message and Method of Sharing Your Faith."
Other important publications by Olson include The Entrance of Sin
into the World (Minneapolis: Men for Missions, 1973), Holiness
and Sin (Minneapolis: Men for Missions, 1971), and The Moral
Government of God, 3d rev. ed. (Minneapolis: Men for Missions,
1974).
6 For extensive citations from other MGT proponents in
a longer critique of the system, see E. Calvin Beisner, The
Heresy of Moral Government Theology (Sunnyvale, CA: Coalition
on Revival, 1989, 1990). For a more extensive critique specifically
of MGT's rejection of God's foreknowledge, see Beisner, "The
Omniscience of God: Biblical Doctrine and Answers to Objections,"
Crosswinds: The Reformation Digest 2:1 (Spring/Summer 1993),
10-26. Copies of both are available from the author at $5 each prepaid
(4409 Alabama Avenue, Chattanooga, Tennessee, 37409).
7 Olson, Sharing Your Faith (henceforth Sharing),
W-Me-IV-7. (Olson uses this page numbering system in both Sharing
and The Truth Shall Make You Free.)
8 Olson, The Truth Shall Make You Free (henceforth
Truth), T-V-1.
9 Truth, T-V-1; T-V-3; T-VI-5; T-VI-6; Sharing,
W-Me-IV-4-5; W-Me-VIII-6.
10 Sharing, W-Me-IV-5.
11 Ibid., W-Me-VII-3.
12 Ibid., unnumbered page opposite W-Me-IV-6.
13 Truth, T-III-13.
14 Ibid., T-III-18.
15 Ibid., T-III-13.
16 Ibid., T-III-23.
17 Ibid., T-V-1.
18 Ibid., T-III-22.
19 Ibid., T-III-23.
20 Ibid., T-III-22.
21 Ibid., T-III-23.
22 Olson, Holiness and Sin, 24.
23 Truth, T-III-22.
24 Ibid.
25 Ibid., T-VI-8.
26 Sharing, "Historical Opinions," 2.
27 Truth, T-VII-4.
28 "Historical Opinions as to the Nature of Christ's
Atoning Death," 3, in Truth, page following T-VII-10.
29 Ibid., T-VIII-4.
30 Ibid., T-VI-8.
31 Ibid., T-IV-11.
32 Martin Luther, The Bondage of the Will, trans.
Henry Cole (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1976); also in Luther and Erasmus:
Free Will and Salvation, ed. E. Gordon Rupp and Philip S. Watson
(Philadelphia: Westminster, 1969).
33 Truth, T-III-13.
34 The Greek word huper, here translated for,
conveys, in contexts like this, the sense of substitution. See
A. T. Robertson, A Grammar of the Greek New Testament in the Light
of Historical Research (Nashville: Broadman Press, 1934), 630-31;
A. T. Robertson, Word Pictures in the New Testament, 6 vols.
(Nashville: Broadman Press, 1933), 6:115-16; R. C. H. Lenski, The
Interpretation of the Epistles of St. Peter, St. John and St. Jude
(Minneapolis: Augsburg, 1966), 156.
35 Greek: antilutron, literally, "a substituted
payment."
36 Greek: huper, "in the place of"; see
note no. 34 above.
37 John Wesley, Explanatory Notes upon the New Testament,
15th ed. (New York: Carlton & Porter, n.d.), 232.
38 By John Wesley: A Modern Reader's Introduction to
the Man and his Message..., ed. T. Otto Nall (New York: Association
Press, 1961), 20-21; extract from the sermon, "Divine Providence,"
in The Works of the Rev. John Wesley, ed. John Emory (New York:
Methodist Book Concern, 1916), 2:99-107.
39 By John Wesley, 62-63; extracted from Wesley's
sermon, "The Lord of Righteousness," in Standard Sermons
of John Wesley, 2:426-27.
40 Arminius, Apology Against Thirty-one Defamatory Articles,
Article XXII, in The Writings of James Arminius, 3 vols., trans.
James Nichols and W. R. Bagnall (Grand Rapids: Baker Book House, 1977),
1:344-46.
41 By John Wesley, 29-30; extracted from Wesley's
sermon, "Original Sin," in Standard Sermons of John Wesley,
2:222-25.
42 Arminius, Public Disputations, VII, XV-XVI, in
Writings of James Arminius, 1:485-86
.
43 Arminius, Declaration of Sentiments, III, in
Writings of James Arminius, 1:252-53.
44 Wesley, Explanatory Notes, 370.
45 Arminius, Public Disputations, XIV, XVI, in Writings
of James Arminius, 1:560.
46 Wesley, Explanatory Notes, 375.
47 Arminius, Declaration of Sentiments, IX, in Writings
of James Arminius, 1:264.
48 I have cited these at great length in point-by-point
opposition to the primary tenets of MGT in The Heresy of Moral
Government Theology.
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