In the spirit of transparency, if you are reading this blog for the first time, you should know that I am not a fan of Arminian theology. I am a confessing Reformed Baptist, and my beliefs are closely aligned with the Credo-Baptist movement that emerged during, or shortly after, the Protestant Reformation. I am fully committed to the doctrines of grace and consider the expression of Christianity in the reformed churches to be the purest and closest to that revealed in Scripture. Recently, some of my reformed brothers have made sweeping and harsh judgments about Arminian theology that I believe is not only unhelpful but is also, on the face of it, simply mistaken. I believe that the rhetoric has reached a place where it certainly could prove extremely detrimental to increasing the influence of reformed theology in the Christian churches. And I don’t think I am alone when I say that we in the reformed school would like to see our tribe increase. To that end, I am going to provide my personal thoughts on Arminian theology. These thoughts are couched within the context of some of the comments being made by Sonny Hernandez over at Reforming America Ministries. The real issue at which I am trying to get is whether or not one can hold, in any way, to the articles of Arminian theology and possess genuine faith. According to some of my friends, they cannot. The point of this post then is to explore the more concise question: is the failure to affirm the doctrines of grace in reformed theology proof of a false profession? Are Arminians false converts. It is my contention that if the rhetoric of Sonny Hernandez is correct, then Arminian Christians are nothing more than false converts. Personally, I find this position to be reprehensible on every level.
I think it is important from the start to define what I mean by Arminian theology as well as provide a workable definition for what I mean by heresy. Since it is easier to provide a definition of heresy, I will begin there. The Greek word translated heresy in the NT is αἵρεσις, hairesis. The word is translated sect 3x, party 3x, factions, divisions, and heresies 1x respectively. Only three of the NT writers used this word: Luke used it 6x and never in a derogatory manner. Paul used it twice and Peter once and both only used it in a derogatory manner. In Gal. 5:20, it appears in the list of the works of the flesh, which, those who practice, will not inherit the kingdom of God. Those who practice heresy are placed alongside those who practice adultery. Again, Paul uses it in 1 Cor. 11:19 in a negative sense where it is rendered factions in the context of the inappropriate administration of the Lord’s supper. Again, we see the displeasure of God manifesting itself in this instance with the Corinthian community. Finally, Peter uses it in its most ominous sense when he employs it to warn about false teachers. Peter calls these heresies destructive. They bring about damnation. It is this specific use of heresy that I will employ as I attempt to share my views on Arminian theology and whether or not it inherently rises to the level of heresy, at least the way heresy is defined in the New Testament. The specific heresy to which Peter referred was the sort of belief that involved a denial of Christ as Lord. We get a glimpse into this heresy when Peter mentions their greed in 2 Peter 2:3. These teachers are boldly blaspheming the holy ones. They are sexually immoral. They were idolaters, engaging in a self-indulgent lifestyle. Clearly, then, a heretic in this sense of the word is not someone whose faith would be considered genuine. They would be an object of rebuke and correction and if obstinate, subjected to church discipline. Heresy was employed in the NT to address those who perverted the nature of God as well as the nature of the gospel.
Before I go any further, I want to frame up the argument as concise as possible so that you understand exactly what I am getting at:
- 1. There are no regenerate heretics
- 2. Everyone persisting in heresy is a heretic.
- 3. Arminian theology is heresy.
- 4. Therefore, everyone persisting in Arminian theology is unregenerate.
I will put it in a Hypothetical Syllogism:
If you are Arminian, then you are a heretic.
If you are a heretic, then you are unregenerate.
Therefore, if you are Arminian, you are unregenerate.
The necessary conclusion of the proposition that Arminian theology is heresy is that there is no such thing as an Arminian Christian. But I don’t think that is actually what Hernandez is arguing. I think it is worse than that. It seems to be that Hernandez is arguing that the doctrines of grace are the gospel. And in that case, the syllogism would look like this:
If you reject the doctrines of grace, you reject the gospel.
If you reject the gospel, you are not saved.
Therefore, if you reject the doctrines of grace, you are not saved.
My aim in this post is to deny the soundness of this argument, an argument that it seems to me that Dr. Sonny Hernandez affirms.
Now, let’s take a look at Arminian theology by traveling back in time to the early 17th century to see if we can ascertain what Arminian theology affirms. The Remonstrance of the Arminians was drawn up and presented to the Dutch pastors at the Synod of Dort in 1610. Peter Enns provides a summary of the Arminian Remonstrance:
The five points of the Remonstrance emphasized: (1) conditional predestination based on the foreknowledge of God; (2) Christ’s death was universal; He died for everyone, but His death was effective only for believers; (3) saving faith is impossible apart from the regeneration of the Holy Spirit; (4) God’s grace can be resisted; and (5) although God supplies grace so that believers may persevere, the Scriptures are not clear that a believer could never be lost.[1] The Synod of Dort produced what has come to be known as The Canons of Dordt, which is essentially the response of the Dutch Reformed Church to the proposal of the Arminians. The canons are outlined as five heads of doctrine, each with its own respective rejection of the errors concerning that particular doctrine. The first head deals with unconditional election, the second with particular redemption or limited atonement as it is often called, the third with total depravity, the fourth with irresistible grace, and finally, the fifth head deals with the perseverance of the saints. The remainder of this blog post will provide the Arminian article dealing with the doctrine and my own critique of that doctrine. I will explore the theological range of each of the five articles to determine how the interpretation of each one could shift from being within the bounds of orthodoxy to moving into error, serious error, and perhaps even heterodoxy, or as we call it, heresy.
The first article affirms that divine election is based on foreknowledge:
That God, by an eternal, unchangeable purpose in Jesus Christ his son, before the foundation of the world, hath determined, out of the fallen, sin full race of men, to save in Christ, for Christ’s sake, and through Christ, those who, through the grace of the Holy Ghost, shall believe on this his Son Jesus, and shall persevere in this faith and obedience of faith, through this grace, even to the end; and, on the other hand, to leave the incorrigible and unbelieving in sin and under wrath, and to condemn them as alienate from Christ, according to the word of the gospel in John 3:36: “He that believeth on the Son hath everlasting life: and he that believeth not the Son shall not see life; but the wrath of God abideth on him,” and according to other passages of Scripture also.
The positive element of this affirmation is that it attempts to be true to Scripture by not denying God’s eternal, unchangeable purpose in the world. The language of this article can be fairly thorny. The article affirms that God’s purpose is to save those who shall, in the future, believe in his Son Jesus Christ. Notice that the ability to believe is credited to the Holy Spirit and is acknowledged to be through grace. There are different ways this article could be interpreted. The standard view for most Arminians seems to be to claim that God, from all eternity, only elects those whom he foreknew would freely choose to place their faith in Christ.
The problem with this particular view, that election is based on God’s foreknowledge, is that it requires that God learn or become aware of something that he did not know previously. In other words, the idea is that God looks into the future (a crystal ball kind of experience) and sees who chooses to believe the gospel, and he elects them to salvation. The problem is that this is not God choosing me; it is me choosing God. The second problem is that the God revealed in Scripture does not learn and therefore cannot be understood to act based on acquired knowledge. Third, Romans 9 teaches that chose Jacob and rejected Esau, not based on anything either one of them had done, but so that his purpose would stand. This text is the clearest refutation of the view that divine election is conditioned on God’s foreknowledge of the acts of free creatures. God’s election is based on his own purpose. It is not external to God but is based in God. Finally, it is impossible to know the future acts of absolutely free creatures because they could always act to the contrary.
“Thus election was not determined by, or conditioned upon anything that men would do, but resulted entirely from God’s self-determined purpose.”[2]
Deut. 10:14-15
Behold, to the Lord your God belong heaven and the heaven of heavens, the earth with all that is in it. Yet the Lord set his heart in love on your fathers and chose their offspring after them, you above all peoples, as you are this day.
Eph. 1:4
even as he chose us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before him. In love 5 he predestined us for adoption to himself as sons through Jesus Christ, according to the purpose of his will.
The second article affirms that the atonement is universal in its value and its intent
That, agreeably thereto, Jesus Christ, the Saviour of the world, died for all men and for every man, so that he has obtained for them all, by his death on the cross, redemption and the forgiveness of sins; yet that no one actually enjoys this forgiveness of sins except the believer, according to the word of the Gospel of John 3:16: “God so loved the world that he gave his only-begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.” And in the First Epistle of John 2:2: “And he is the propitiation for our sins; and not for ours only, but also for the sins of the whole world.”[3]
Notice how the article says that Christ obtained for all the forgiveness of sins but that only the believer enjoys the actual forgiveness of sins. To be clear, one of the most challenging points in the doctrines of grace is this one: limited atonement. Anyone who attempts to argue that this doctrine is as clear as say, the resurrection, or the Trinity, or that it has the clear historic backing of even the early reformers is simply not being honest. Moreover, anyone that claims that Arminian has no reasonable interpretive backing to reject the doctrine of limited atonement simply isn’t being honest or is not sufficiently familiar with the textual data. This is generally the final point to be embraced by most reformed Christians shifting from Arminianism to reformed theology. Needless to say, it is not quite right to say that Arminians of the conservative stripe hold to universal atonement or redemption because they don’t. Evangelical Arminians believe that people who reject Christ have not had their sins forgiven because they did not appropriate that forgiveness by grace through faith in Christ. And therefore, those people will be forever lost. This means that they actually do affirm a limitation on the atonement, albeit, one that is different from their reformed brothers.
The problem with the standard evangelical Arminian view on the atonement is that it essentially means that the death of Christ did not actually atone for the sins of anyone. It simply made men redeemable. It is, for all intents and purposes, when taken to its logical conclusion, not an atonement at all, but only a potential atonement. It depends on the cooperation of the individual. It leads to a synergistic understanding of salvation. As John Owen put it, either Christ died for 1) all the sins of all men or 2) some of the sins of all men, or 3) all of the sins of some men. (1) is outright universalism which amounts to the rejection of the exclusivity of the gospel. (2) is a denial of the sufficiency of the atonement. (3) seems to be the teaching of Scripture on the matter. Christ did not intend to save every man without exception, but all sorts of men without distinction. Matthew explains that the Messiah has come to save his people from their sin. A major hurdle for this view is that its denial creates serious issues for the nature of God. Why do so many people die every year without ever hearing the gospel if Christ truly came to die for their sin? If that is teased out, it seems to call into question God’s power and his intelligence. Hebrews 9:12 says that Christ has secured an eternal redemption by his blood. Such security is impossible if one takes the Arminian article to its logical conclusion.
“Since all men will not be saved as the result of Christ’s redeeming work, a limitation must be admitted.”[4]
2 Cor. 5:21
For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.
Heb. 9:12
he entered once for all into the holy places, not by means of the blood of goats and calves but by means of his own blood, thus securing an eternal redemption.
The third article seems to affirm total depravity
That man has not saving grace of himself, nor of the energy of his free will, in as much as he, in the state of apostasy and sin, can of and by himself neither think, will, nor do any thing that is truly good (such as saving Faith eminently is); but that it is needful that he be born again of God in Christ, through his Holy Spirit, and renewed in understanding, inclination, or will, and all his powers, in order that he may rightly understand, think, will, and effect what is truly good, according to the Word of Christ, John 15:5: “Without me ye can do nothing.”[5]
This article seems a bit odd to many Calvinists because it seems to affirm the doctrine of total depravity. Indeed, concerning the Arminian view of free will, Jacob Arminius himself wrote, “But in his lapsed and sinful state, man is not capable, of and by himself, either to think, to will, or to do that which is really good; but it is necessary for him to be regenerated and renewed in his intellect, affections or will, and in all his powers by God through the Holy Spirit, that he may be qualified rightly to understand, esteem, consider, will, and perform whatever is truly good.”[6] The modern claim made by Arminians is that total depravity does not equal total inability. The concept of prevenient grace is introduced as a way to explain how men can be both a fallen sinner, depraved in his intellect and passion or will, and still able to freely choose to place his faith in Christ. The doctrine of prevenient grace, however, is clearly borrowed from the older Roman Catholic ordo salutis.
The problem with prevenient grace is that Paul seems to have been completely unaware of its existence when he wrote his letters. For example, 2 Cor. 4:4 says, In their case the god of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelievers, to keep them from seeing the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God. Notice that if prevenient grace was dispensed at the payment of Christ at the cross to all men, then how could they still be hopelessly blind? Rom. 8:6-8 informs us, For to set the mind on the flesh is death, but to set the mind on the Spirit is life and peace. For the mind that is set on the flesh is hostile to God, for it does not submit to God’s law; indeed, it cannot. Those who are in the flesh cannot please God. And again, 1 Cor. 2:14 teaches, The natural person does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are folly to him, and he is not able to understand them because they are spiritually discerned. The unregenerate sinner is blind, ignorant, and unwilling and unable to see, understand, perceive, or love what he needs to love in order to freely place his faith in Christ. The unregenerate man does not possess the kind of faith necessary to save him! A point often missed entirely in Arminian theology.
Nevertheless, on the doctrine of total depravity, it seems that Arminius and his early followers were far more Calvinistic than modern Arminians or even Calvinists realize. Those who deny total depravity contradict Scripture and commit an egregious error.
Ecc. 9:3
Also, the hearts of the children of man are full of evil, and madness is in their hearts while they live, and after that they go to the dead.
Titus 1:15-16
To the pure, all things are pure, but to the defiled and unbelieving, nothing is pure; but both their minds and their consciences are defiled. 16 They profess to know God, but they deny him by their works. They are detestable, disobedient, unfit for any good work.
The fourth article postulates the doctrine of prevenient grace
That this grace of God is the beginning, continuance, and accomplishment of all good, even to this extent, that the regenerate man himself, without prevenient or assisting, awakening, following and co-operative grace, can neither think, will, nor do good, nor withstand any temptations to evil; so that all good deeds or movements, that can be conceived, must be ascribed to the grace of God in Christ. But as respects the mode of the operation of this grace, it is not irresistible, inasmuch as it is written concerning many, that they have resisted the Holy Ghost. Acts 7, and elsewhere in many places.[7]
Arminius himself seems to hold the Roman Catholic view of a superadded grace even in Adam. This seems to me to be the root error for Arminianism on this issue and if pressed to its logical end is highly problematic. Arminius says, concerning Adams ability to know, to perform holy acts, to understand: Yet none of these acts could he do, except through the assistance of Divine Grace. This is precisely the Roman Catholic understanding of Adam’s original state. Arminius also seems to espouse the Roman Catholic understanding of grace as an infused substance: It is an infusion (both into the human understanding and into the will and affections,) of all those gifts of the Holy Spirit which appertain to the regeneration and renewing of man.[8]
The doctrine of prevenient grace lacks even the slightest support in the biblical text. The real problem is Arminius’ understanding of grace as something infused in converts, and his view of the nature of Adam. Taken to its logical conclusion, this becomes no small theological error. If Adam, even in his natural state required a superadded grace to keep God’s commandment, we must say that either God’s grace was resistible from the start or that God withheld his grace so as to sustain Adam’s obedience. The Arminian would claim the former; God’s grace was resistible from the start. Moreover, such grace would have only enabled the faculties of Adam to choose the good. It would not have guaranteed that he would do so. By this grace, Adam was only enabled and by this grace Adam had access to God. Moreover, when he sinned, he lost this grace as a punishment. This is the Roman Catholic scheme, but it does not seem far from Arminius. Roman Catholic theology believes that the lower faculties such as free will, the cognitive faculties, like human reason, were unaffected by the fall. It does not appear to be the case that Arminius followed the Roman doctrine all the way to this end. The Reformed doctrine of Adam’s original nature, on the other hand, is that Adam was created positively holy. He was not neutral, not balanced between good and evil. He was created with a holy will and with holy affections. These were his natural traits as originally created. This, Rome denies and Arminius seems to implicitly deny as well. R.C. Sproul asks the best question regarding the doctrine of prevenient grace: The $64 question for advocates of prevenient grace is why some people cooperate with it and others don’t. How we answer that will reveal how gracious we believe our salvation really is. The $64,000 question is, “Does the Bible teach such a doctrine of prevenient grace? If so, where?”[9]
“Simply stated, this doctrine [efficacious grace] asserts that the Holy Spirit never fails to bring to salvation those sinners whom He personally calls to Christ. He inevitably applies salvation to every sinner whom He intends to save, and it is His intention to save all the elect.”[10]
Acts 13:48
And when the Gentiles heard this, they began rejoicing and glorifying the word of the Lord, and as many as were appointed to eternal life believed.
The fifth article refuses to affirm perseverance
That those who are incorporated into Christ by a true faith, and have thereby become partakers of his life-giving Spirit, have thereby full power to strive against Satan, sin, the world, and their own flesh, and to win the victory; it being well understood that it is ever through the assisting grace of the Holy Ghost; and that Jesus Christ assists them through his Spirit in all temptations, extends to them his hand, and if only they are ready for the conflict, and desire his help, and are not inactive, keeps them from falling, so that they, by no craft or power of Satan, can be misled nor plucked out of Christ’s hands, according to the Word of Christ, John 10:28: “Neither shall any man pluck them out of my hand.” But whether they are capable, through negligence, of forsaking again the first beginnings of their life in Christ, of again returning to this present evil world, of turning away from the holy doctrine which was delivered them, of losing a good conscience, of becoming devoid of grace, that must be more particularly determined out of the Holy Scripture, before we ourselves can teach it with the full persuasion of our minds.[11]
Concerning this doctrine, Arminius wrote, “Though I here openly and ingenuously affirm, I have never taught that a true believer can either totally or finally fall away from the faith and perish; yet I will not conceal, that there are passages of Scripture which seem to me to wear this aspect; and those answers to them which I have been permitted to see, are not of such a kind as to approve themselves on all points to my understanding. On the other hand, certain passages are produced for the contrary doctrine [of Unconditional Perseverance] which are worthy of much consideration.[12]
This article points up toward the fact that Arminianism fails to affirm the doctrine of the perseverance of the saints. To be fair, most Evangelical Arminians affirm a modified version of this doctrine at a minimum: the infamous once saved always saved teaching. This is a notorious and damnable doctrine when carried into practice. It is the antinomian, cheap-grace, easy believism that is found so often in many modern Evangelical churches. However, such perversion of this doctrine would have been unconscionable to the framers of the articles of Arminianism presented at Dordt. And the truth is that many, many Evangelical Arminians affirm the perseverance of the saints.
The refusal of Arminian theology to affirm the doctrine of perseverance is particularly disconcerting. Jesus said, And this is the will of him who sent me, that I should lose nothing of all that he has given me, but raise it up on the last day. (John 6:39) John informs us, No one born of God makes a practice of sinning, for God’s seed abides in him; and he cannot keep on sinning, because he has been born of God. (1 John 3:9)
James Montgomery Boice writes, “This doctrine has a logical connection to the other Calvinistic distinctives, of course. Because we are radically depraved and because salvation depends on God’s sovereign acts in our salvation, we have a security that is based on its ability and will rather than our own.”[13] The key difference between the Arminian view and Reformed view is that the latter locates the guarantee of perseverance in the work of the grace of God. The prophet Jeremiah prophesied, And I will put the fear of me in their hearts, that they may not turn from me. (Jer. 32:40) There is no turning away from the new covenant. God puts his fear in the heart of his own and they never turn away from him.
In summary, Arminian theology could be understood and interpreted and embraced in a manner that does not rise to the level of heresy. This, of course, does not mean that Arminianism should be treated as if it is insignificant, an unimportant theological issue. Far from it. Arminians quite often have a tendency to live their theology and it is when Arminianism is lived consistently that the problems morph into egregious error and even heresy. There are strict forms of Arminianism that deliberately pervert the nature of God. These versions of Arminianism easily translate into heresy when they do so. The denial of God’s perfect knowledge, or of God’s absolute sovereignty in a way that leads to open theism or in a way that openly admits of a frustrated deity, are heretical. The problem with most evangelicals today is that they have no idea who Jacob Arminius was nor do they seem to care. And most of them don’t have time to really pay Arminius or his system much attention. Maybe that should not be the case. Maybe that is itself an indictment of the typical American Christian. I tend to think that it is. But even so, it is not heresy, nor does it mean that these Christians do not possess genuine faith. Most Christians would be classified as Arminians because, as R.C. Sproul once said, we are all Pelagian by nature. When we are converted, that Pelagian thinking is eventually purged from our thinking, but the default that replaces it seems to be Arminianism. Those who know better should use their gifts and abilities to change things. We influence people into better thinking, better theology, and better living, not by accusing them of being a false convert, or a hypocrite. That only comes at the end of a very long process in which a person obstinately holds to clearly heretical doctrine or immoral practices. We don’t begin the discussion with someone who is in error by questioning the legitimacy of their faith. My next post will deal with the disturbing and dangerous practice of lumping all non-Reformed Christians into the false convert bucket. It will answer the question: are the doctrines of grace equivalent to the gospel and is Arminian theology necessarily a false gospel? It will also answer the question, what about Calvinists who insist that every Christian embrace Calvinism is just the same way they embrace it or else they are lost?
Mr. Ed
[1] Paul P. Enns, The Moody Handbook of Theology (Chicago, IL: Moody Press, 1989), 493.
[2] Steele, David N. & Thomas, Curtis C. The Five Points of Calvinism: Defined, Defended, Documented. (Phillipsburg, NJ: P&R Publishing, 1963) 30.
[3] Paul P. Enns, The Moody Handbook of Theology (Chicago, IL: Moody Press, 1989), 493–494.
[4] Steele, David N. & Thomas, Curtis C. The Five Points of Calvinism: Defined, Defended, Documented. (Phillipsburg, NJ: P&R Publishing, 1963) 39.
[5] Paul P. Enns, The Moody Handbook of Theology (Chicago, IL: Moody Press, 1989), 494.
[6] Arminius, Jacob. The Works of Arminius, (Baker Book House, London edition, 1996) Vol. I, 659-660.
[7] Paul P. Enns, The Moody Handbook of Theology (Chicago, IL: Moody Press, 1989), 494.
[8] Arminius, Jacob. The Works of Arminius, (Baker Book House, London edition, 1996) Vol. I, 663-664.
[9] R. C. Sproul, Chosen by God (Wheaton, IL: Tyndale House Publishers, 1986), 125.
[10] Steele, David N. & Thomas, Curtis C. The Five Points of Calvinism: Defined, Defended, Documented. (Phillipsburg, NJ: P&R Publishing, 1963) 48.
[11] Paul P. Enns, The Moody Handbook of Theology (Chicago, IL: Moody Press, 1989), 494.
[12] Arminius, Jacob. The Works of Arminius, (Baker Book House, London edition, 1996) Vol. I, 667.
[13] Boice, James Montgomery. The Doctrines of Grace, (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Books, 2002), 158.
