Quite often in my discussions on faith I am associated with the late Dallas Seminary professor Zane Hodges or his group at the Grace Evangelical Society see https://faithalone.org/tag/zane-hodges/ . In my study of the “Lordship Salvation” view Zane Hodges is often referred to as a Sandemanian. This post is to dispel this nonsense.
Any cursory study of Robert Sandeman will find that Robert Sandeman believed that Faith was a gift of God and was a knowledge of the truth (1 Tim. 2:4, 2 Tim. 3:7) not involving the human will at all (John 1:12, Rom. 9:16). That same cursory study of Zane Hodges and the Grace Evangelical Society will show that they deny faith is a gift of God and that it is dependent on the human will. To put it succinctly, Sandeman was a Calvinist and Hodges was an Arminian. Fortunately, some critics have been scholarly enough to admit this. Lloyd-Jones in his work The Puritans: Their Origins and Successors is careful to admit this and even goes as far as to say that Sandeman was a high Calvinist. David Gay is another careful critic and in his book reviewed above called The Secret Stifler, he calls Sandemanianism a Reformed error. Compare this to the book The Faith That Saves by Arminians Fred Chay and John P. Correa https://wipfandstock.com/the-faith-that-saves.html and you can clearly see that no Arminian can be a Sandemanian. Faith for an Arminian will always necessitate free will as a part of faith which is antithetical to Sandemanianism.
After saying this I do want to say that most Arminians are “Lordship Salvationists” and so the Arminians are divided over certain aspects admittedly. A lot of Arminians agree with the “Lordship Salvation” taught in Arminian Baptist Robert Shank’s book Life In the Son see https://www.amazon.com/dp/091162001X/ref=nodl_?tag=duckduckgo-ipad-20&linkCode=osi&th=1&psc=1 . This book was listed as a source by John MacArthur in the first edition of his The Gospel According To Jesus by the way. But for Arminian dispensationalists, Zane Hodges seems to have more traction than Robert Shank.
I understand that theologians will keep calling Hodges a Sandemanian despite the truth of the matter. I know they will use some guilt by association trick to discourage thoughtful research into Robert Sandeman. I know they probably think that Sandemanianism will lead to the errors of Zane Hodges.
They just need to know that I will continue to say that their view will either lead to “Federal Vision”and Norman Shepherd theology of works justification or to the error of Robert Shank, that a Christian can lose his salvation if he does not obey enough.
