Roman Catholic apologist and former Calvinist, Patrick Seamus O’Hara,
wrote the following about the problematic nature of the Protestant concept of
being saved by “making a decision for Jesus” and the unbiblical understanding
of the nature of the “covenant” concept in eschatological salvation:
Bible Fundamentalists
are fond of calling baptism “works salvation.” This misnomer shows their
complete lack of understanding of the covenant nature of our relationship to
the Lord and how a covenant is made. In Fundamentalism, there is an idea that
an action called “making a decision for Jesus” has the full weight of bringing
salvation—and thus the unbreakable promise of eternal life—to the individual
who goes up the aisle of the Baptist church on Sunday morning. This is not
possible, for several reasons:
1. Making a “decision for Jesus
involves no ritual covenant making. There is no instance of anyone ever making
a covenant without being personal involved in a ritual in which the principles of
the covenant were followed. There must be an act of taking vows and agreeing to
the sanctions involved for breaking those vows.
2. Making a “decision for Jesus”
can be done in front of one’s TV set while watching Billy Graham given an
invitation to “invite Jesus into your heart.” In such a situation, there is no
one watching. But in making a covenant, there must be witnesses to the
covenant. Sutton states that the need for witnesses is to bring a covenant
lawsuit against anyone who violates the ethics of the covenant. To cut a
covenant, three elements are necessary: sanctions, oath, and witnesses (Ray
Sutton, “That You May Prosper,” Institute
for Christian Economics, June 1987, p. 78).
3. Making a decision for Jesus
does not involve the human body. This is an important consideration for
covenant cutting. The whole person is given to the other—body, soul, and
spirit. The act of involving our body in covenant making, whether it be in
circumcision or in baptism, makes real the fact that we as persons are
tripartite beings. To withhold my body from the covenant making ritual is to
hold back a part of me. Fundamentalists
have a strange and almost semi-Gnostic aversion to anything physical being
involved in Christian worship, whether it be the body in baptism or
candles, priestly robes, and icons. (Patrick Seamus O’Hara, The Dance of Isaiah: Correcting the Calvinist and Evangelical Understanding
of the Biblical Covenant [Fairfax, Va.: Kings of Luighne Publishing, 2011] 119-20,
emphasis added)
With respect to the charge of Protestantism (not just “Fundamentalism”)
being stained with Gnostic tendencies, such has been admitted, and discussed in
some detail, by a Protestant scholar, Philip J. Lee, Against the Protestant Gnostics.
