When someone says that God foreordained the conversion of Smith, and that the conversion of Smith was therefore made necessary, a denial of this would include the view that the conversion of Smith was contingent, not necessary, and that God’s foreordination took up some percentage of the whole deal that was less than 100%. In other words, if the conversion weighed ten pounds, God carried nine and Smith one, or God eight and Smith two. This kind of thing is a denial of God’s sovereignty in salvation.
But if someone says that God does it all, and that His foreordination does not need the cooperation of any other agent in order to make it effective, but that it is also true that Smith is not a puppet, and that God uses various instruments in layered hierarchies, all subordinate to the sovereign use of God, who is directing it all, this does not amount to a denial of God’s sovereignty in salvation.
Now a fundamentalist Calvinist, if we may postulate such a one, could say that all this theologizing makes his head hurt, and that as soon as we starting saying things “how will they preach unless they are sent?” we are threatening to undermine pure Calvinism, as he understands it. But by pure Calvinism he means invisible lightning bolts from heaven, converting souls in a willy nilly and inscrutable fashion, and connected in no way to Christian literature, preaching, prayers, Christian nurture, or any of that stuff. But this is not Calvinism — it is a caricature.
The same kind of thing is going on with this Auburn Avenue business. If I were to say that we are saved by the instrumentality of faith alone (which I in fact do say), this does not commit me to deny God’s use of secondary instruments. These secondary instruments are subordinate to the sole instrument used by God when a man is justified . . . by faith alone. Where does this faith come from? Faithfulness to sola fide does not require us to say that it comes from that invisible lightning bolt. God uses means, and He uses primary means (faith) and secondary means (preaching, baptism, nurture, etc.). Faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the Word of God. St. Paul does not say “faith comes by lightning bolts.”
Put another way, faith is mediated to us.