William Perkins (1558-1602) was an important Puritan preacher and theologian. To make a very long story short, Puritans were heavily influenced by Calvinist theology, although they went beyond Calvin in several ways. In particular, Puritans took the doctrine of limited atonement and predestination to its natural conclusion: double predestination. Not only did God predestine some to be eternally saved, but that meant He predestined everyone else to be eternally damned. The other doctrine you will find in this chart is supralapsarianism ("before the fall"): God decreed who would be sent to heaven or hell before Adam was even created or committed the first sin. {Aside: this is counter to the other view, infralapsarianism/sublapsarianism, which says that after Adam committed the first sin, God decreed that He would save some of those fallen and leave the rest to suffer their just condemnation.} In other words, before you were born (actually, before God created the universe), He had already determined whether you would go to heaven or hell. For obvious reasons, this created a great deal of angst among Puritan church members. There was nothing they could do to affect their eternal destination, and because it was God's choice alone there was also no way to know what God had chosen for you! This is a pastoral counseling nightmare. Anyway, because this theology was so frightening to common church members, pastors like William Perkins created elaborate charts describing the process of salvation so that concerned church members could find themselves on it, and that's what you have below. About the chart. I traced this from the standard Perkins chart to make it easier to read (which it's still not easy enough to read). The colors are my own, added so I could explain the groupings of things. There are several things to notice, and I'll walk through them quickly. 1. The chart of salvation begins, ends, and is centered on the Godhead's glory, in particular Jesus Christ. This is the foundation of Puritan theology: all things tend to the glory of God. The decision of salvation is God's, and whether you are saved or damned brings glory to God. The middle column is the sweep of eternity. God decrees salvation and damnation, then He creates humanity (which falls). He then sends Jesus to live, die, and rise, and now we are waiting for the Last Judgment. The matters of Christ the Redeemer (in the light green in the middle) are also the primary content of "the faith," which all Christians must apprehend. 2. The Puritan process of salvation is noted in gold: election, effectual calling, justification, sanctification, and glorification. This is standard Reformed soteriology, so no worries there. What you might find interesting is the further breakdown offered in the lighter yellow: effectual preaching, mollifying of the heart, faith, remission of sin, imputation of righteousness, mortification, vivification, then finally repentance and obedience. I call this interesting because the order is as important as the content. Only those who experience these steps in this order will be saved (compare against the right part of the chart). Mollifying of the heart is the opposite of hardening of the heart, and it only happens after someone has effectually heard the Word preached. Note that the forgiveness of sins is in response to faith, and repentance only happens after one has died and been born again. This is not the blog entry to go into a discussion of Reformed soteriology. I'm just trying to put up some information about Perkins's Golden Chain. However, it would be appropriate to note that this order of things cannot be found in the Bible with anything like this specificity. It is a progression based on human logic. But anyway. 3. The plight of the damned can be found on the right. In the first place, you have the experience of one called (but not effectually; the lighter gray). Note that the upward swing of that person's experience sounds more like the biblical pattern. Maybe that's intentional? But before his faith can amount to anything permanent, he relapses and his experience looks much like that of the unsaved, uncalled person. That person lives his whole life as a hard-hearted reprobate and eventually dies in fulness of sin, just as the one who once gave evidence of zeal. Both are damned. Now, it is very important that Perkins included the far left column on his chart - the experience of the elect that mirrors that of the damned. Even the elect doubt and sin. He would have had to counsel many discouraged and fearful church members who noted in their behavior things incompatible with his Golden Chain. The left-most column gave him an out and his people hope. It is not unlike the Baptist discussion of assurance of salvation: we do not say that anyone can lose his salvation; we say that he was never saved in the first place. That's really all Perkins is saying. Brief Thoughts. Again, this is not the place to analyze. There are many excellent books out there on the subject. I just wanted to provide a free trace of the Golden Chain. I greatly respect the focus on the Godhead. God is very clear that this universe is all about Jesus. However, I would encourage you to look for biblical evidence of the exactitude of salvation given here. I see the Chain as a product of a need to give any kind of pastoral comfort to a person who could have no assurance of salvation. That's not an acceptable reason for a theory of the process of salvation. For my own part, I take Paul at his word in Romans 10:8-10: The message is near you, in your mouth and in your heart. This is the message of faith that we proclaim: If you confess with your mouth, “Jesus is Lord,” and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved. One believes with the heart, resulting in righteousness, and one confesses with the mouth, resulting in salvation. God was clear that only He knows the heart. But He also made clear the path to salvation in Jesus Christ (the narrow road). Our salvation is not the crapshoot that Perkins made it out to be. Neither is anyone's eternal damnation.
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