The altar-call racket

I'm going to quote and comment on this post:

http://www.williamwbirch.com/2012/01/saturday-devotion-public-invitation-and.html

There are Calvinists who disdain the evangelistic use of the "altar call," or "public invitation," to come to Christ Jesus. For example, Steve Hays, of Triablogue infamy, insists that the "altar call system is unscriptural." I have to wonder what "scriptures" Hays is reading, because the Christian New Testament grants an ample amount of examples of public invitations for sinners to repent and follow Christ Jesus.

Birch’s argument trades on key equivocations. But let’s begin by describing what the altar call is and how it functions in modern mass evangelism.

Prospective converts are told that performing this ritual, this is how they are saved. Performing this physical formula action is salvific.

On a related note, they are told, not only that this is how to be saved, but how to know that they are saved. Their assurance of salvation depends on a past action which they performed.

If you ask them 5 years later how they know they are saved, they will point back to the altar call.

A classic version of the altar call is for the evangelist to ask, if you were to die tonight, do you know if you’d go to heaven? The evangelist then assures the potential convert that if he performs this ritual, he will go to heaven if he dies tonight in a traffic accident on the way home from the revival (or whatever).

That’s what I’m opposing.

One must wonder also why any Calvinist would disdain the altar call since 1) God meticulously foreordains all things, according to Calvinists, and that would, by necessity, include the altar call;

i) By the same token, God’s meticulous foreordination necessarily includes Calvinists who “disdain” the altar call. Hence, my “distain” is entirely consistent with predestination. Calvinists who “disdain” the alter call are fulfilling God’s decree rather than thwarting God’s decree. God predestined Calvinists to “disdain” the altar-call.

ii) We don’t know in advance what God has decreed. We discover God’s plan by living through time. We learn God’s plan by experience, by watching his plan unfold minute-by-minute, hour-by-hour, year-by-year.

iii) God sometimes uses error as a foil to highlight truth. Error stands in contrast to truth. The predestined contrast between truth and error clarifies the nature of both. Like light and shade, they are mutually interpretive.

But there’s also an asymmetry between the two. Error is, at most, a means to an end, whereas truth is an end it itself. Error can have an instrumental value whereas truth has intrinsic value.

2) God can bring His elect to Christ through the altar call;

i) Which ironically illustrates the fact that an Arminian method can only work under Calvinist assumptions.

ii) To take a comparison, God can use false prophets like Balaam and Caiaphas. They do his bidding in spite of themselves. Yet that doesn’t prevent God from condemning false prophets.

3) The altar call is merely a public invitation to trust in Christ;

i) To the contrary, it’s a factory or assembly line to mechanically produce converts. And it thereby confers false assurance on skin-deep converts.

ii) I don’t object to ministers (or laymen, for that matter) issuing a public invitation to trust in Christ. What I object to is when they promise members of the audience that if they perform a ritual, that’s equivalent to saving faith.

 4) Jesus Himself called people publicly unto Himself;

That’s equivocal. For instance, he called the disciples to accompany him. But that’s not equivalent to saving faith. Did Judas exercise saving faith when he accompanied Christ? No. That’s just a physical action.

 5) Christ's disciples also called people publicly unto repentance and faith in Jesus;

Fact is, the altar call is a substitute sacrament. A counterfeit ordinance. We already have a biblical ordinance by which adult converts publicly profess their faith in Christ: baptism. That’s the divinely-authorized rite of initiation–not the altar call. That’s how a convert is supposed to publicly testify to his faith in Christ.

(Of course, as time goes on, there is also the witness of his life.)

and 6) ministers can just as easily manipulate people through their sermons -- they certainly do not need an altar to accomplish that!

A red herring.

Birch then quotes a chapter from a book defending the altar call.

Most Calvinists oppose the use of a public invitation or altar call at the end of sermons.1 They think such practices tend to be confusing at best, spiritually dangerous at worst, and certainly a hindrance to true evangelism. Strict five-point Calvinists criticize the invitation on three grounds. First, they believe it has no biblical support. Second, they believe its origin can be traced back only a few hundred years. Third, they think it is incompatible with their understanding of total depravity, unconditional election, limited atonement, and irresistible grace. . . .

Instead of Alan Street putting words in my mouth and telling me why I oppose the altar call, I prefer to speak for myself.

i) A general reason I oppose the altar call is because the alter call presupposes a particular theory of how we acquire our beliefs. The technical term for this is direct doxastic voluntarism.

On this theory, we enjoy direct voluntary control over what we believe or disbelieve. We can instantly believe or disbelieve something by a sheer act of the will.

I reject this theory, in part, because it’s a paper theory that’s totally at odds with human experience. We don’t simply choose to believe or disbelieve something. There are many things we can’t help believing, just as there are many things we can’t help not believing.

As a rule, we simply find ourselves believing something or disbelieving something. We have a predisposition to believe or disbelieve certain things. When we’re exposed to perceived evidence or counterevidence, in conjunction with our predisposition, we form a corresponding belief.

Sometimes we can do things to cultivate or undermine a belief. If that succeeds, that is, at best, a delayed effect. And even that’s hit-n-miss.

Belief is an act of perception (or apprehension) rather than an act of the will. It’s an empirical fact of human experience that we don’t simply believe or disbelieve at will.

This confuses belief with action. We can will ourselves to act in certain ways, in accordance with our beliefs. To act on or act out what we already believe.

ii) One needs to distinguish between conversion and faith. Conversion can occur at a subliminal level. In his autobiography (Sometimes Mountains Move), Everett Koop describes his conversion experience. He began attending Tenth Presbyterian Church. When he started, he was not a Christian. He heard the sermons from the viewpoint of an outsider. An unbeliever. But one day it dawned on him that he was now hearing the sermons as an insider. At some point he had indiscernibly crossed over to the other side. He wasn’t conscious of the underlying process. He wasn’t aware of the transition. He only became aware of the result. It occurred to him that he was now hearing the sermon with the ears of faith.

Saving faith is the conscious effect of a subconscious event.

Some folks go to church all their life, but it never clicks. For other people, they can’t remember a time when they didn’t believe. There was a time when they were too young to believe. But saving faith was a spontaneous part of their emerging awareness.

Some folks may attend a church service for the very first time and immediately believe what they hear, as if God prepared their hearts in advance.

Some people are nominal believers until they hear a clear presentation of the Bible, at which point they turn against the faith. The message hardens them.

Some people hear the message, but it has no immediate impact, or they may initially resist. Yet it has a delayed effect–like planting a seed that slowly germinates just under the surface, until it emerges. It takes hold and grows on them.

Jesus called people to follow Him publicly. He promised, "Whosoever confesses Me before men, him will I also confess before My Father in heaven" (Matt. 10:32). Conversely, He warned, "But whoever denies Me before men, him I will also deny before My Father who is in heaven" ([Matt. 10:33]). Jesus offered little hope of salvation to those who wished to remain anonymous.

That’s about the potential cost of discipleship in the face of persecution. Not about conversion. It’s a test of faith, not a source of faith. That’s not what makes you a believer, but what proves you to be a believer–or not.

Responding to an alter call, where you’re surrounded by a sympathetic audience, where there’s peer pressure to go forward, where you’re rewarded by social affirmation, is precisely the opposite of what Jesus is describing-–where you will be punished for your faith, where the incentive is to openly deny your faith.

One of His favorite words of exhortation was "Come."

Which begs the question of how we come to Jesus.

The apostle Paul reminds us "that if you confess with your mouth the Lord Jesus Christ and believe in your heart that God has raised Him from the dead, you will be saved. For with the heart one believes to righteousness, and with the mouth confession is made to salvation" (Rom. 10:9-10). However one cuts it, this text links public confession to salvation. One must both believe and confess the facts of the gospel in order to be saved (v. 9). Just as the heart believes "to righteousness," so the mouth confesses "to salvation" (v. 10). . . .

i) Which illustrates the lethal deficiency of the altar call. The altar call is a deceptive half-truth. For it separates the lips from the heart. Doctrinal profession falls fatally short of saving faith unless that’s undergirded by heartfelt conviction. A “circumcised heart”–in OT usage. For instance:

This people honors me with their lips, but their heart is far from me (Mt 15:8).

 

And the Lord said: “Because this people draw near with their mouth and honor me with their lips, while their hearts are far from me, and their fear of me is a commandment taught by men" (Isa 29:13).

To be a saving profession of faith, verbal profession must be in the heart before it’s on the lips:

But the word is very near you. It is in your mouth and in your heart, so that you can do it (Deut 30:14).

Rote recitation of an orthodox creedal statement is not saving faith.

ii) Keep in mind, too, that Paul’s parallelistic structure in Rom 10:9-10 is a rhetorical device. He’s not suggesting that verbal profession is independently salvific.