Theopedia

Decisionism

To all who did receive him, who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God, who were born, not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God.

— John 1:12-13

Definition

Decisionism treats a person’s own act, coming forward at an invitation, raising a hand, praying a prescribed prayer, as itself the regenerating change Scripture calls the new birth, rather than as a possible outward sign that the new birth has already occurred.1 On this view an external, human decision is sufficient evidence of inward conversion.1 Reformed theology holds instead that regeneration is the Holy Spirit’s own monergistic work, logically prior to and productive of the sinner’s own believing, so that a decision can express saving faith but cannot itself produce it.2

Confessional Witness

The 1689 London Baptist Confession states, under Effectual Calling, that God draws the elect to Christ by his Word and Spirit, “renewing their wills, and by his almighty power determining them to that which is good… yet so as they come most freely, being made willing by his grace.” This call is “of God’s free and special grace alone, not from anything at all foreseen in man, nor from any power or agency in the creature… the creature being wholly passive therein, being dead in sins and trespasses, until, being quickened and renewed by the Holy Spirit, he is thereby enabled to answer this call.”2 The confession’s own doctrine of this call, and its relation to regeneration and conversion, is stated at length in those articles; the point that bears directly on decisionism is the “wholly passive” clause: the confession locates the decisive saving act in the Spirit’s own work, not in the sinner’s exercise of his natural powers of choice.

Biblical Basis

John’s Gospel opens by tracing the right to become children of God to a birth “not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God” (John 1:12-13). Jesus tells Nicodemus that entering the kingdom requires being “born again,” a birth as outside the subject’s own control as the wind (John 3:3-8). Paul locates the sinner’s condition prior to conversion as “dead in the trespasses and sins” and credits the resulting new life entirely to God, “even when we were dead in our trespasses, [he] made us alive together with Christ,” so that salvation is “not your own doing… not a result of works, so that no one may boast” (Eph. 2:1-2, 4-5, 8-9). Paul states the same point about the will directly: “it depends not on human will or exertion, but on God, who has mercy” (Rom. 9:16).

Historical Development

Charles Finney and the theology of decision

Jonathan Edwards, preaching in the revivals of the 1730s and 1740s, warned the unconverted of God’s wrath and the torments of hell; on his account conversion moved the sinner from dread to comfort and peace as the fruit of the Spirit’s own work.3 Charles Finney (1792-1875) broke with this pattern. Finney “proceeded from the assumption that human beings are sinners voluntarily and urged them to make a decision to give their heart to God now, in this very moment,” a pattern continued after him by D. L. Moody and other evangelists.3

Finney’s theology supplied the rationale for this appeal. He held that moral agency requires “plenary ability,” the unaided power to choose either good or evil, so that everything for which a person is responsible falls under the category of choice.1 Regeneration, on this account, was nothing more than “the change of the purpose to seek our own happiness, for the purpose to seek as our ultimate end the happiness of the universe,” a decision reached, like any other, through consideration and comparison of motives.1 Contemporary Reformed critics traced this directly to Nathaniel Taylor’s “New Haven theology,” which likewise made regeneration “a change of purpose” the sinner reaches by weighing where his happiness is best secured.1 Charles Hodge summarized the shared error of both systems this way: “This may be a correct account of the process of conversion, with which this system confounds regeneration,” since a voluntary turning of the will is one thing and the Spirit’s prior work that makes such a turning possible is another; “the most accurate analysis of the laws of vision can throw no light on the way in which Christ opened the eyes of the blind.”1 Hodge judged Finney’s and Taylor’s views “mere philosophical theories,” “outside of the Bible” and “inconsistent with the teachings of Scripture and with genuine Christian experience.”1

A semi-Pelagian lineage

Finney’s premise, that fallen man retains a natural ability to repent and obey God’s law without the Spirit’s regenerating work, did not originate with him. It descends from Philip Limborch’s Remonstrant theology, which treated grace as merely “assisting” a will already capable of turning to God rather than as regenerating that will; this position passed through Nathaniel Taylor before Finney adopted it.4 Even fellow nineteenth-century Arminians objected to it on the same ground Reformed critics did: Thomas Summers rejected New England’s “New Divinity” as “essentially Pelagian, as it denies that sin is in the nature of man, but only in his voluntary actions, and affirms that man has the natural ability to do what God requires.”4

Objections and Responses

Doesn’t Scripture itself call sinners to believe, repent, and “call upon the name of the Lord,” so that pressing for a decision is simply obedience to the gospel’s own terms? Reformed theology distinguishes the external call, the gospel invitation addressed to every hearer alike, from the effectual call, the Spirit’s inward work that alone regenerates.5 Scripture’s commands to believe and call on the Lord belong to the external call; a sinner’s outward response to that call, coming forward, praying a prayer, is not itself the evidence that the Spirit’s effectual, regenerating call has taken place. The command to believe does not presuppose that fallen man has, unaided, the natural ability to obey it; the Spirit’s own prior work is what produces, effectually, the very response the gospel commands.2

If an outward decision proves nothing, doesn’t that undercut any assurance a new believer could have? The objection trades on treating the decision itself as the ground of assurance rather than as one possible, but not sufficient, sign of it. A public response can express genuine, Spirit-wrought faith or can be, as decisionism itself proposes, mistaken for the new birth it merely accompanies; Scripture’s own warnings against false and temporary professions (Matt. 13:20-21; 1 John 2:19) assume exactly this gap between an outward act and inward regeneration. Assurance rests on the fruit of a changed life and the Spirit’s own witness, not on the moment of decision considered by itself.

Related Doctrines

References

  1. Charles Hodge, “Chapter XV. Regeneration,” in Systematic Theology, Volume III (New York: Charles Scribner and Company, 1873), 11-15. ↩ ↩2 ↩3 ↩4 ↩5 ↩6 ↩7

  2. The Second London Baptist Confession of Faith (1689), chap. 10, “Of Effectual Calling,” paras. 1-2. ↩ ↩2 ↩3

  3. Herman Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics: Abridged in One Volume, ed. John Bolt (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2011), chap. 19, “Faith and Conversion.” ↩ ↩2

  4. Matthew Michael Barrett, “Arminian Synergism in Theological Perspective,” in “Reclaiming Monergism: The Case for Sovereign Grace in Effectual Calling and Regeneration” (PhD diss., The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, 2011), 308-310. ↩ ↩2

  5. Charles Hodge, “Chapter XIV. Vocation,” in Systematic Theology, Volume II (New York: Charles Scribner and Company, 1872), 637-639. ↩