Are You An Arminian? Take This Test!

Most people know that Calvinists (or Reformed, if you will) believe in the five points of Reformed theology, unless they are a so-called four-pointer, of course, but here's a test that may surprise you. In case you aren't familiar with TULIP, the acrostic that stands for "total depravity," "unconditional election," "limited atonement," "irresistible grace," and "perseverance of the saints," I will review. T means we are inherently bad, not good--we are not as bad as we could be, but as bad off as we could be in God's estimation; U means God doesn't base His election of us on anything meritorious in us, not prescient election, which says God merely sees who will believe and elects them (that would be meritorious); L means God has a particular redemption or definite atonement in mind--it is the Arminians that actually limit the atonement, the Calvinists make it efficacious for the elect. P means God preserves us despite ourselves, otherwise known as eternal security.

Denying any of these doctrines makes you part Arminian. The Synod of Dort in 1618 condemned the Remonstrants who were Arminian and affirmed these five points. Calvinism is the biblical and orthodox position, not Arminianism, developed by Jacobus Arminius (his Latin name, who was Jacob Hermann in his own tongue) of The Netherlands, who was condemned as a heretic by an ecumenical council and lost his professorship (he was actually a Reformed theologian).

A: Salvation is synergistic, or man cooperates with God
C: Salvation is monergistic and grace is efficacious and irresistible & God's work
A: All have the ability to believe if they want to
C: No one can believe, or will to believe apart from grace
A: Faith is the reason we are saved, it is our righteousness, it is a work of man
C: Faith is a gift of God, it is the work of God, but our act
A: Faith is reckoned as righteousness
C: Faith is reckoned unto (the instrumentality or means of) righteousness
A: Salvation is a cooperation between man and God-man takes the first step of faith and meets God half-way
C: God initiates salvation and grants faith through grace--we cannot believe apart from grace's intervention
A: Man has a free will and can operate independently of God, even thwarting Him
C: The will is enslaved to sin, in bondage and not freed, though he is a free
moral agent
A: Faith is a meritorious work accomplished by man that leads to salvation
C: Faith is a gift of God that is unto salvation, the instrumentality
A: The atonement saves none for sure, but makes possible the salvation of all if
they believe
C: The atonement was accomplished when Christ said, "It is finished" and secures the elect's salvation.

Arminians above represented by A; Calvinists or Reformed by C

The Arminian believes he met God "half-way" and pats himself on the back for his salvation--not giving all the glory to God (a battle cry of the Reformation was sola Deo Gloria--to God alone be the glory.)

The Romanist believes grace is necessary, but not sufficient--one must do something meritorious. However, grace is the sin qua non of salvation--it is necessary and sufficient. Have you heard of the Geritol testimony where the person said Geritol really helped him but he also took his grandmother's secret recipe? Of course, that testimony could not be used because it could not be proved the Geritol was the answer.

R. C. Sproul quotes J. I. Packer as follows: "The difference between them [Arminians and Calvinists] is not primarily one of emphasis, but of content. One proclaims a God who saves; the other speaks of a God who enables man to save himself. One view presents the three great acts of the Holy Trinity for the recovering of lost mankind--election by the Father, redemption by the Son, calling by the Spirit--as directed towards the same persons, and as securing their salvation infallibly. The other view gives each act a different reference (the objects of redemption being all mankind, of calling, those who hear the gospel, and of election, those hearers who respond), and denies that any man's salvation is secured by any of them. The two theologies thus conceive the plan of salvation in quite different terms. One makes salvation depend on the work of God, the other on a work of man...."  The big question is whether Jesus saves us outright, or just enables us to save ourselves--does He make salvation possible, or assured?

Now, I do not believe Calvinists should show contempt for Arminians, because if they are evangelical they are probably Christians, too, and also there are very few Calvinists around who can say they were never Arminians at one time or at least convinced of one of their doctrines. I do not believe it is good to label our fellow believers, but this distinction is very clear and is like Protestant/Catholic. One can be an evangelical Arminian, of course. Arminian churches are Church of Christ, Church of the Nazarene, Pentecostal, Methodist, Wesleyan, Roman Catholic.    Soli Deo Gloria!

The Bondage Of The Will

"If any man will to do his will, he shall know of the doctrine..." (John 7:17, KJV).  


Martin Luther said that the freedom of the will is a grandiose term and fit only for God. Our wills are enslaved to the old sin nature and inclined to evil. They are biased and prone to evil, not good. Luther said that man has not ceased to be man, but ceased to be good. We are only free in the sense that God doesn't force us to do evil--we do it on our own volition. Augustine of Hippo said that we are free, but not freed. This is not a mind game, but only stressing that we don't have liberty, though we are responsible moral agents. We concur with our evil and no one forces us to do evil, which would be determinism or coercion. We are voluntary slaves to evil.

There are many Bible verses that stress the lack of freedom to respond to Christ on our own without the wooing of the Spirit. "No one can come to Me unless the Father who sent Me draws him." "It is not of him that willeth, nor of him that runneth, but of God who showeth mercy." "Who are born not of the flesh, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God. " "The way of man is not in himself, it is not in man who walks to direct his steps." "A man devises his thoughts, but the Lord directs his steps." (Cf. Prov. 20:24; Jer. 10:23; John 1:13; Rom. 9:16)

The freedom of the will so to speak is a curse, since we are free to do evil. Augustine said that we are non posse non peccare, which means we can only do evil. Luther said the will can only do evil, too. God does not make us do evil, we do it on our own initiative and willingly. There is no outside force making us do something, that would be determinism or coercion. We are free "to choose our own poison" (So to speak). We are free to go to hell.

According to Martin Luther, the will is enslaved to the old sin nature and not free. St. Augustine of Hippo said that the will is free, but not freed. He wasn't playing mind games but saying that we are responsible agents to God for our choices, but don't have liberty. He doesn't force us to do evil (known as coercion), because we do it on our own initiative. The freedom of the will is a curse because we can only do evil according to Luther.

Where did free will help Esau? There are many Bible verses that show that man doesn't have free will as far as the ability to choose and come to Christ apart from grace and the wooing of the Spirit. "For who can resist His will? [Rom. 9:19]" "It is not of him that willeth ..." "Who were born not of the flesh, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God." "For the way of man is not in himself, it is not in man that walketh to direct his steps." (Jer. 10:23) We are biased or prone to evil, not good. Martin Luther said we have not ceased to be man, but have ceased to be good. The whole matter can be summed up in the phrase: "We don't need free will--we need WILLS MADE FREE!"

We are inclined to evil, not good--the ability lost at the fall. If you are different or virtuous, that is God's gift to you, not vice versa. "What do you have that you didn't receive [cf. 1 Cor. 4:7] Who makes you to differ?" "The heart devises the way, but the Lord directs his steps." That means God is sovereign!

This is one of the oldest debates in Christendom. Pelagius and Augustine debated it and so did Luther and Erasmus von Rotterdam (who wrote "In Praise of Folly" and made the Greek text of the New Testament available to scholars). The prevalence of the doctrine of freedom of the will in today's church is due to the influence of the Wesleyan Arminians. Don't let anyone make you think that the bondage of the will is a new doctrine or that it is not orthodox, because it is the original doctrine defended by the church Fathers and the Reformers. We are free moral agents, though, because we are individually responsible to God and without excuse for our sin.   Soli Deo Gloria!

Free Will 1

My understanding is that we are free to make decisions such as preferences and inclinations and tastes, but not free to make decisions for Christ. That is why Augustine said we are free, but not freed. (We don't have the liberty to change ourselves and our nature.) Our inclination to do good was lost at the fall. We were not free to choose our nature, e.g., choleric, sanguine, melancholy, or phlegmatic, but we do and can make choices. We distinguish natural freedom (making choices) from moral freedom. ("No one can [has the ability to] come to Christ unless it has been granted him by the Father.")

This is a very tough subject and I do not claim to be an expert, because nobody can explain the sovereignty of God. We are free to act according to our nature, but remember that God is the potter and we are the clay. "We are free to choose our own poison," is what John MacArthur says, and I agree. We are free to go to hell. No one ever thwarts God--Rom. 9:19 says, "For who can resist His will?" We simply cannot do anything good in God's estimation apart from His grace.

We did not choose Christ before He chose us (John 15:16). (Predestination means to mark out ahead of time.) God needs to work on us before we can choose Him. We are not automatons, robots, nor chatty dolls. No one can say he came to Christ apart from the aid of the Holy Spirit. If left to ourselves, none of us would come to Him. When Arminians say some simply desire to come to Christ they are actually attributing merit to the equation, and salvation based on works.  Soli Deo Gloria!

Free Will 2

Martin Luther claimed that the doctrine of the will was the "heart of the gospel." It is a clue to seeing grace at work. God is no man's debtor, as would be the case in Rome's view that faith is a meritorious work. Faith is a work, a work of God (cf. John 6:29). The Bible makes it clear that faith is a gift (Phil. 1:29; Acts 18:27; Eph. 2:8-9; Rom. 12:3; 1 Pet. 1:1).

How did free will help Esau, and how did it affect Jacob, who were destined before they were born? The will can only do evil and Jesus said that without him we can do nothing (even believe) as he said in John 15:5. We cannot do anything good apart from God's grace. We are free to choose our own poison! Evangelists insist we need free will (free will and sovereign grace cannot coexist), but we need wills made free. We are enslaved to our old sin nature and need to be set free. "You shall know the truth, and the truth shall set you free."

Augustine said we are non posse non peccare, which means we can only sin and that we cannot but sin. (This is the inability not to sin.) All of our nature is affected by evil and that includes our will. See Is. 1:5-6, "from the soul of the foot to the head there is no soundness in it."  Soli Deo Gloria!

Intro To Arminianism

Arminianism is named after the famed 17th-century Dutch professor and theologian Jacobus Arminius in Latin or Jacob Hermann. His teachings influence the Methodist, Wesleyan, Church of the Nazarene, Pentecostal, and Church of Christ churches. They deny the 5 points of Reformed theology, which are total depravity, unconditional election, limited atonement, irresistible grace and perseverance of the saints (known as the acrostic TULIP).

Martin Luther wrote a book, "The Babylonian Captivity of the Church" in which he talks about this "semi-Pelagian" heresy that has crept into the church. I do not believe Arminians are deceivers, they are just confused: You cannot have sovereign grace and merit or works simultaneously--they are mutually exclusive. Either God is in control of our salvation or we are, we cannot share in the power or authority.

Arminians believe the Calvinist God is some sort of a despot, and they are protecting God's nature by denying unconditional election or predestination. It is not because of anything we did that God elected us in eternity past. They believe some people desire God and that is why they respond positively. (But they cannot explain why some desire and others don't.)  We were all enemies of God, God wasn't our enemy! They believe in absolutely free will and even after they are saved they can rebel against God and go to hell. They have the tendency to trust in human effort or willpower. Our wills are only free in that we act voluntarily. God never forces us to do anything. (That would be coercion or determinism.)

We are voluntary slaves that always act in our own enlightened self-interest. Even our motives are wrong. All our righteousness is as filthy rags (Is. 64:6) The Arminian tends to have a semi-Pelagian viewpoint which is very optimistic about human nature: We only have sick; There is a vestige of goodwill left in us, And we operate from a position of moral neutrality. The truth is that we are like leopards trying to change our spots or like Ethiopians trying to change our skin. (Jer. 13:23) Arminians seem to believe in the inherent goodness of man (an almost humanist philosophy that elevates man at God's expense), rather than the total depravity of man. They believe in "prevenient" grace whereby God prepares them to believe-- and everyone for that matter--but it is their own work. "For you have believed through grace...." (Acts 18:27; cf. Phil. 1:29 and 2 Pet. 1:1-3).

However,  God opened the door of faith for the Gentiles in Acts 14:27 and also "opened Lydia's heart to attend to the gospel." (Acts 16:14) They believe they are somehow more righteous because they believe and that their belief is righteousness--a Romanist doctrine. The verse Rom. 4:5 which says Abraham believed God and it was counted him as righteousness should be translated unto righteousness (Martin Luther did it right with "zur"); faith cannot be both the instrumentality or means of righteousness and righteousness itself. "For by grace are you saved through faith, and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God, not of works, lest anyone should boast" (Eph. 2:8-9). ("That" refers to the whole phrase as the antecedent, since it is the neuter case.)

Arminians essentially believe that we improve on God's grace by believing and doing Him the favor of the meritorious work of faith, which they don't believe is a gift. In essence, they cooperate with God in their salvation, rather than receive it by grace alone. Remember this: "Salvation is of the Lord." (Jonah 2:9) Salvation by sovereign grace and also by free will are mutually exclusive, you cannot have both. From our perspective, God is able to overcome our reluctance and make the unwilling willing. Soli Deo Gloria! That means we don't get ANY of the glory in our salvation.   Soli Deo Gloria!

Arminianism Basics

The Arminian believes that results speak for themselves and that in evangelizing what is important is to get decisions regardless of the quality (but Jesus was never interested in quantity over quality). God ordains the means as well as the ends. We should feel privileged to have the opportunity to work for God and pray and witness. God is omniscient because He knows all that could possibly be and could not be sovereign if He didn't. ("For who can resist His will?") God is omnipotent in that He can do anything He wills to do according to His plan. God is just in that He is no respecter of persons and everyone has the opportunity to respond to the light that they have.

God is loving in that He shows common grace to all and is good to all. Jesus had compassion on the crowd. But love is God's essence and everything He does is in love. He doesn't send people to hell; they send themselves. (The Arminian believes that some people desire to get saved while others have no such desire for God. This is hogwash because without grace no one would desire God--there's no place for merit.)

We were all enemies of God and God overcame our reluctance by irresistible grace and an effectual call. We are not any more virtuous by believing or it would be meritorious. (Rome has tried to make faith a meritorious work.)   Believing is the work of God. We don't conjure up our faith either, it comes by the hearing of the Word of Christ. We believe through grace and it was granted to us to believe.  Acts 18:27; Phil. 1:29) We can get with the program if we want to because God certainly can get His will done without us, but He has ordained that we are used for His glory. God is so omnipotent that He can melt any heart. The formula is: Melt me, Mold me, Fill me, Use me!

God can do anything that makes sense, anything He wants to and is concordant with His nature. The faux dilemma that asks if God can create a rock so big He can't move it is ridiculous. God loses either way. Logic says that both cannot simultaneously exist. God cannot stop being God; that would be going against His nature of sovereignty. Everything God does must work together with His other attributes. He is not a private party like we are that can be biased. This is the simplicity (He is never torn in two directions) of God and He never is in a dilemma! God is self-sufficient and doesn't need anyone, but He has decided to make His glory known and show his love.

John 7:17 says, "If anyone wills to do His will, he shall know..." (and that is the key of sincerity). That doesn't guarantee salvation but, nevertheless, must be present to find God. He doesn't want to be found by triflers. ("God's chief quarrel with man is that he doesn't or cannot seek Him.")  But the wonder of His grace is that He found us and He was found by those who weren't even looking (cf. Is. 65:1).

No one is going to be able to say that they were on the wrong list. Because God gives everyone the opportunity and time to repent. The goodness of God leads to repentance. (Rom. 2:4) We wonder at the prosperity of the wicked, well, God doesn't want them to have any excuse! The Bible teaches both the efficacy of prayer and the sovereignty of God and so we have to affirm both. We are part of the plan! No one has an excuse with God. God has never left the world or the person without a witness (Acts 14:17).   Soli Deo Gloria!

Determinism

Everything is determined in some respect by something. The question is whether our will is restrained or not in the process. If I do something to you that causes you to do something as a direct result, that can be a sort of determination. According to Jonathan Edwards, God is 100 percent sovereign and there are no "maverick molecules" in the universe, (Edwards says, "I like to ascribe absolute sovereignty to God"), to use an illustration. God never forces us to do something we don't want to do, though (that would be coercion or determinism), but He does influence us and let us act according to His plan. Like Joseph said, "You meant it for evil, but God meant it for good." This is concurrence or the working together of our wills with God's ultimate will. The Pharisees were playing right into God's plan when they arrested Jesus and had Him crucified. So even the most dastardly act in history was foreordained by God.

"God is at work within you, both to will and to do of His good pleasure." (Phil. 2:13) We are moral beings responsible for our decisions, but things of a mere matter of taste or preference we are not. You are not going to die before your time even if you make a bad choice, like Chinese food and choking on it. A good Bible verse is Ps. 110:3 which says " Your troops shall be willing in the day of Your power." Col. 1:29 says God is mightily at work in us. Who made you prefer Chinese food? All our freedom means is that God doesn't force us to do something we don't want to do, but can change our nature and make us willing to do what He wants us to do.

Self-determination is at the heart of our will in this sense. No one can say, "I didn't make that decision!" We also reap what we sow (the law of the harvest) and God lets us suffer the consequences of choosing Chinese food if we don't know how to chew that well in our eating habits. God, of course, is free to intervene, but He doesn't have to (that would be mercy). The Westminster Confession states that everything that happens is God's ordained will or decree and that in allowing it to happen it has to be His will in some sense.

Wycliffe's tenet was that "everything comes to pass of necessity." It is fore-ordained to happen in God's divine decrees. God is both sovereign and we are free agents in the sense of having a will that makes choices. We make decisions on what seems best to us at the moment, all things considered. God manipulates the circumstance.

I'm not a fatalist, but I believe God's will must be done. There are different kinds of wills of God. The will of disposition is what God desires or what is pleasing to Him. He desires all to be saved in this sense. But God doesn't act according to this since all are not saved. God has a preceptive will, which we read about in the Bible. God also has a secret or decreed will which is none of our business. For instance, God never explained to Job why he as suffering. We do not have the ability to frustrate God and God is not so impotent that He cannot accomplish whatsoever He wills. God does what He pleases, both in the Heavens and on the earth (Ps. 135:6). This is one of the perks of being God--He can do as he wills. God is never frustrated in His will either.

I know I elaborated a little, but I don't think anyone understands the sovereignty of God, just like the Trinity or the glory of God. He is incomprehensible. The finite cannot penetrate the infinite. Nothing outside of us ever forces us to do anything we don't want to do. There is no effect without a cause! God is not an effect! (He is self-existent, has no history, and is not confined to time, matter or space, which He created.)

Free But Not Freed

St. Augustine said that our wills are "free but not freed." He is not playing word games but is trying to say that we are voluntary slaves of sin and do not have liberty. We are either slaves to Satan or to God, there is no middle island of neutrality. We cannot say: "From henceforth, I will only be good!" That is where our freedom ends. We have no inclination to good. God could not say the opposite of that statement and is necessarily good, while the devil is necessarily evil. We have natural freedom but not moral freedom. We retain our natural ability to make choices but make the wrong choices. We can only choose good with God's grace.


The Arminian believes some people desire to be saved and to know God, and that is their explanation for their salvation. Calvinists believe no one seeks God and no one is good or inclined to good. "Paul lumps all men together" according to Luther. When we get to heaven we will have real freedom to the ultimate degree and will not desire evil or have that inclination. The question is where did that desire to choose Christ come from? Arminians believe God woos all men, but cannot explain why some respond other than that they believe of their own free will or merit and have something to boast about.

Our freedom is like being on a train on which God sets the destination and we are free to sin to our heart's content but have to stay on the train, only God can transfer us to the train to heaven.

The key to understanding the TULIP points is in insisting on absolute total depravity if you give man any abilities to please God by himself or by works, the points break down. Pelagius (a 5th-century British monk) insisted that man was basically good and that Adam's sin affected him only.

We don't need a free will, we need wills made free, as I have said before. We are into Satan and his kingdom before being set free by the Son. "If the Son shall set you free, you shall be free indeed" (John 8:36). Think of ultimate free will this way: In Heaven, we will be free to be sinless and will not be free to sin, but we don't want to either. Adam was free to sin or not to sin, but we inherit the birthright of a fallen nature.

A Will, But Not A Freed One

The bottom line is that we don't need free will--we need WILLS MADE FREE. "If the Son shall set you free, you shall be free indeed." There is no outside force making us do something we don't want to, for that would be determinism, and we are against that. God's coercion is love. (He is able to quicken faith within us and overcome our unwillingness to make us willing.) We make a willing choice, that's it. God is able to change our dispositions, though.

We have a will, it's just not free to do good apart from God, it can only do evil. But we are free moral agents, which means we are responsible for our decisions and a choice is given us--we are not chatty dolls or automatons or robots without a will.  The point is that the will is enslaved to the old sin nature and corrupted through and through, and cannot do any good apart from the grace of God.

When we are born again our nature changes. Faith is the result of the new birth, not the cause of it. Regeneration precedes faith according to the great theologian J. Edwin Orr. We don't believe in our own strength and then God owes us regeneration. Otherwise, we make God our debtor. God is no one's debtor. He doesn't have to give grace to anyone; it's a miracle anyone is saved.

"The Lord directs a man's steps, how then can he understand his way?" "You shall know the truth, and the truth shall set you free ." " We are born not of the will of man, nor the will of the flesh ...." It is not of him that wills ...."   Jer. 10:23, Prov. 20:24, Ps. 37:23, Prov. 16:9 and Prov. 21:1 all make it clear that God is in control ("The king's heart is in the hand of the Lord, He turns it whithersoever He wills"). Jer. 10:23 says, "The way of man is not in himself, it is not in man who walks to direct his steps." The Council of Trent in 1545-63 pronounced a curse (anathema) on those who refused to accept the doctrine of free will and of our "cooperation" with God unto salvation. We contribute nothing to our salvation, says Luther, because Jonah 2:9 says, "Salvation is of the Lord." (It doesn't say that salvation is of the Lord and of us.)    Soli Deo Gloria!

The Will Of Man

"Man has not ceased to be man, he has just ceased to be good," according to Martin Luther. The will is not sovereign, but operates subject to the disposition of the person. When we talk of the total depravity of man we are not saying we are as bad as we can be, just that we are as bad off as we can be; all of our nature is sick with sin, including the intellect, will and emotions. "The whole head is sick, and the whole heart faint" (cf. Isa. 1:5).

A definition of the will by Jonathan Edwards was that it was that by which the mind chooses. We always choose according to the strongest desire at the time to suit our own best interest, all things considered. God never coerces us to do something we don't want to do. We never do something we don't want to do.

The trouble is no one wants to receive Christ apart from the grace of God. He woos us and makes us willing and able to believe by grace. Arminians think that we cooperate with God in our salvation, but Calvinists maintain that "Salvation is of the Lord." He does it all and gets all the credit--we don't contribute anything to our salvation. "He is at work within you both to do and to do according to His good pleasure." No one can say they came to Christ uninfluenced by the Holy Spirit! There is no such thing as prevenient grace given to all to enable them to make a decision. God is the enabler and is able to overcome the most reluctant, hardened, and sinful heart. (Think of Paul's conversion!)

We are free to choose our own poison, as it were. We are not chatty dolls or automatons but are free moral agents responsible for our choices.

This doctrine according to Luther is the very heart of the gospel. If you fail to realize that you really aren't grace-oriented. There cannot be both free will and sovereign grace at the same time. We don't meet God half-way, but he only rescues us like a lifeguard rescuing a drowning swimmer, when we give up trying to save ourselves. A good example of our will is like the difference between a dove and a raven; the dove has no desire to eat the raven's carrion--it is against his nature.  We did not choose our nature either.

The Council of Trent in the 16th century said that anyone who does not affirm that the freewill cooperates with God in salvation is anathema. This was the Arminian position in opposition to the Reformers (Refer to the Synod of Dort in 1618).

We are voluntary slaves who have lost our inclination to do good at the fall. There is no point of neutrality that we can cling to and have free will. We cannot change our God-given nature. There is no place of "moral equipoise" or neutral territory that we can stand on.  We are not neutral and able to equally choose to be good or evil--we're prone to evil, not inclined to good!   Soli Deo Gloria!