Billy Graham on Original sin & the human will

Depraved, but prevenient grace restores ability to respond

THE POSITION

The sinner is spiritually dead and, as dead, cannot repent; God gives the ability to repent and to believe. But he sets that gift beside a will God will not override: "Even God will not tamper with your will. The will is the hinge on which the door of the kingdom of God swings." He does not use the term prevenient grace, and the order he gives, God giving the ability "if you will say Yes to Him," leaves the relation between the gift and the yes unexplained. Taken literally the yes comes before the gift, which is the reverse of prevenient grace; read with the inability he affirms, the stance is the nearest fit to inability met by an enabling grace that can be refused, so the state is a lean.

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ABOUT THIS FIGURE

Evangelist of the citywide crusades from 1947 to 2005, ordained a Southern Baptist minister, founder, with L. Nelson Bell, of Christianity Today (1956) and convener of the 1974 Lausanne Congress. He is generally reckoned to have preached in person to more people than anyone before him and was the public face of postwar evangelicalism. This entry rests on sermon texts dated 1951 to 2005 that the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association republishes on the Decision magazine website, his recorded Billy Graham Minutes, his daily devotions, interviews he gave to Time, Christianity Today, Newsweek and Robert Schuller, and the My Answer column that ran under his name. By the standard account the column was written with staff, so cells that rest on it say so.