Calvinism and Arminianism - Part 1

The Trojan Horse of Arminianism

Arminianism is a canker on the gospel. Some readers might think this statement divisive, extreme, intolerant or even arrogant. It is none of those things. It is truth. Permit me to quote Ferrel Griswold from his work "The Arminian Controversy":

Whereas older Arminianism was more God-centred, modern day Arminianism is totally man, emotional, experimental entertainment centred, rather than Bible, God-centred.

In other words, Whitefield (a Calvinist) could truthfully say of John Wesley (an Arminian) that he didn't think he would see Wesley in heaven because Wesley would be so close to the throne of God and he so far away that he would not be able to see him. But Whitefield would not make the same statement about many of today's Arminians. He might opine that he doubted he would see them in heaven at all.

It is common for Calvinists today to state quite charitably that to hold Arminian views of the gospel is not damnable heresy. They believe, like Whitefield, that Arminians will be found in heaven – even today's Arminians. So do I – but with qualification. If what Griswold asserted is true (and I believe it is) then there are many modern Arminians who do not believe in the sovereignty of God at all; they don't preach/believe/think of Him as the sovereign God of all things, material and immaterial, and of all events, past present and future. In other words, they deny the Godness of God.

I have already made the point in an earlier post that every natural man is an Arminian and that we are almost all Arminians when we are first saved. We think we did something when we responded to the gospel and received Christ. It is only at some later time that we discover that it was God all along who regenerated us, opened our eyes and moved our wills to receive Christ. We do not remain Arminians forever if we are properly taught, and if we read the Bible with a sound hermeneutic and give proper exegesis. If there are brothers who do that and are still Arminians, then may God give them light! I regard such people as brothers in the Lord and, at opportune moments, I oppose their heretical views with every ounce of strength I have. Nothing different from many of my Calvinist brethren here.

But I am not finished. I have seen the fruit of Arminianism in the modern church and it doesn't get off so lightly as to merely be considered an interesting but obscure question of theological nuance that has no real impact on the gospel. It has enormous impact. The acceptance and propagation of Arminianism by Wesley and one (ultimately dominant) division of the early Methodists is what has contributed to the trickle-down dilution of sound doctrine and, as a result, sound practice in the church. Though Whitefield both knew and respected Wesley as a brother in the Lord he nevertheless saw enough danger in the fledgling Arminian movement within Methodism to severely clip Wesley’s wings in this article in response to Wesley’s scandalously erroneous sermon "Free Grace, which misrepresented the gospel truth and flew in the face of the wisdom of the Westminster divines.

As Whitefield undoubtedly knew, Arminianism, being a heresy, contains the seeds of corruption and the dilution of the pillar of sovereign grace upon which gospel stands. It is and always was like a man setting out to sea in a leaky boat – sure to take its occupants deeper and deeper into trouble until at last they drown. Only 6 or 8 generations after Wesley – and a mere 10 after Arminius – the boat is so leaky and there are so many in it, that it has lost almost all utility as a life preserver. Modern Arminianism is the end of the line that was sealed the moment its seminal error was propagated by leadership in the church so many years ago.

Arminianism has given birth to something worse than itself. It has spawned semi-Pelagianism and is in the process of grandfathering outright a new Pelagianism. Already there are undisguised Pelagian concepts accepted by huge numbers of professors of the faith. To reverse the order of an A. A. Hodge quote:

Augustinians say man is dead; semipelagians say man is sick; Pelagians say man is healthy

The true gospel reinstated by the Reformers is Paulinian/Augustinian; the old Arminians were believers at least in prevenient grace, but the modern Arminianism has, in many places, flowered into semi-Pelagianism - and the new breed of Arminians (like Robert Schuller, for example) is outright Pelagian. It does no good for more "traditional" Arminians to distance themselves from the likes of Schuller. He is child of the same heresy. As is semi-Pelagian Rick Warren and the like. As are the charismatics, by and large. As was (and still is) the Roman church – which explains why all of these are quite comfortable with the idea of getting together in this present age.

Arminianism, condemned as a heresy by the church almost as soon as it appeared, was the thin end of the wedge of humanism, and was rampant by the time of Spurgeon's "Downgrade Controversy". Seemingly harmless at the first, it led by degrees to greater and greater exaltation of the human capacity for choosing the good in spiritual matters, unaided by God. Charles G. Finney gave great impetus to the downgrade in the early 1800's by introducing humanistic concepts into evangelism - believing that any person could (inevitably) be saved if only men would present the gospel in just the right way. Ends began to justify means. Men began to "replace" the Holy Spirit as the primary agent of regeneration. Asa Mahan carried on his teachings and passed them on extensively to others.

So, when the so-called "natural" sciences provided the bullets for humanism to be let loose in full force upon the church in an explosion of rationalism in the mid-1800's the jig was up. Caving in for the most part, much of the church adopted liberal views that denied the Holy Scripture. From the late 1800's until the present day there has been a profusion of progressively less and less theologically sound sects and divisions – most recently resulting in the fragmentation of Christianity into such nihilistic shards as the Emerging Church and postmodern "Christianity" in general. And it can only get worse. Somebody left the gate open and the horse has bolted. More aptly, the Trojan Horse of human ability entered with the innocuous Wesleys and proceeded to kill the guards and open the gates to the invading hordes. And, just like the people in the pictures above and below it is we, the professing church, who have dragged this menace into the citadel and been hoisted on our own petard.

I'm not saying that all Arminians are outright Pelagians - nor that they are the devil incarnate. Some are Arminian in the relatively noble Wesleyan sense. Many today are in the Finneyesque mold, and are teetering on the brink. Others are Schullerian and are utterly lost. I am just pointing out that, once you open the dyke to the exaltation of the human will above and beyond what the scripture allows, there is no way to plug it again, absent a gracious intervention of God. The hole just keeps on getting bigger and bigger until the whole ocean comes in. And it has.

To weakly refer to the Arminian/Calvinist conflict as merely two sides of the same coin, or as two different emphases on the same truth is itself an error spawned in the Hegelian dialectic. There is only one truth. Is God sovereign or is He not? If sovereign, is He sovereign over the human will and over human salvation? To reply with anything short of a resounding "Yes!" creates a God who is less than the God of the gospels – less than the God of the entire Bible; a God who is not able to save those whom He wills; a God Who cannot make decrees because He cannot bring them to pass.

But almost equally wrongly, it removes man from the dust of death where he has delivered himself - to which he has consciously consigned himself - and exalts him into a partnership with the most holy and sovereign God in the matter of salvation. It glorifies and empowers the human will and human worth. It raise man up into a cooperator with the divine instead of keeping man as a dependent upon Him. It undermines the pure objective of the gospel as the means of God alone saving some men from a spiritual death in which they lay powerless to help themselves; and it provides the means of undermining the whole intent of the demonstration of the glories of God’s righteousness in Christ, imparted freely to His utterly undeserving creatures.

The one and only true gospel of grace once for all convinces those saved by it that they are now, and ever shall be, creatures living at the pleasure of God, utterly dependent upon Him – by His grace and favour, and in His everlasting and trustworthy love. As Spurgeon stated years ago in this essay, "Calvinism is the gospel." And if Calvinism is the gospel then, by definition, whatever does not conform to its tenets is not the gospel; it must be, to some degree, "another gospel". “By their fruits shall you know them,” Christ said of the false teachers. Look at the fruit of the Arminian heresy and ask why evangelism must start in most churches today, before it can begin in the pagan community that surrounds them. Arminian thought, and its children, have brought the pagan world into the community of believers by making salvation at least partly a human endeavour. The Bible, however clearly states that salvation is of the Lord, even though He uses people to testify to what God has done. May God raise up preachers who are not afraid to rightly give God all the glory.