A Question for the Calvinist

[Ladodgers6]

Of course not, apparently we 'inherited' our sin nature from Adam

So, does this make an excuse for sinners?

Yes, as it is in their nature to do so.

Good, so it's by their actions that they will be judged.

True again, but can't the non-elect object to God by saying, "I don't have the imputed righteousness of Christ and therefore I stand guilty before you"?

No! Because by their own sins they stand condemned and guilty before God. They also reject God willingly and suppress the truth. Why? because they belong to the prince of the air and do His will.

Correct.

Neither can anyone make a charge against God for whom He has Mercy and has Compassion.

Who? All? Please clarify.

God gave to the Son His people to redeem (John 10). And His sheep hear his voice believe and follow him.

Yes, Romans 9:18 (If we equate predestining with mercy)

So, you disagree that God's election of sinners is not merciful?

Scripturally no, but how would you answer the charge as post by the Arminian as asked in the OP?

Doesn't Paul answer this in Romans? You fail to see, that God doesn't need to save anyone, but He does, out of sheer Mercy. He chooses who to save, not fallen sinners. The Arminian view calls election a violation of man's free will, and that it's up to man to decide if he goes to heaven or hell. Okay, let's look at this view. Does a sinner receive any Grace prior to making a decision or do they have the ability without the Holy Spirit to believe? In your view how does one come to faith? By hearing the Gospel? If so, then why do only some believe while others reject it? If both fully understand what's at stake, why do some reject God? Are they missing something, are the ones who believe better people and do good things and thats why they believe?

Please explain this for us.​

No, not at all. I was just posing a hypothetical taken from the Arminian viewpoint.

Well one is a humanistic viewpoint with a lofty view of man. The other is by Grace Alone!

Maybe you have confused me with @Eternally-Grateful

 

[makesends]

Yet only the nonelect/predestined will find themselves spending eternity in hell?

We are not held accountable for God's work. They are held accountable for their disobedience, unsaved because they didn't believe. Simple rebellion against the Creator, who is the only reason for their very existence.

 

[Arial]

Yet only the nonelect/predestined will find themselves spending eternity in hell?

There are only two gates. The wide one. And the narrow one. Only those predestined to belong to Christ go through the narrow one. It is their destiny to go through the narrow gate. The destiny of the rest is the wide gate.

The one's who were destined to go through the narrow gate, would have gone through the wide gate had God not, by grace alone, elected them for saving mercy. Jesus took the wrath of God against their sins upon himself and set them free. So their sins also met God's justice.

Those who go through the wide gate remain in their natural condition as unregenerate sinners, and meet justice. God did not put them there. They are responsible for being there---and they delighted with the road that led to that wide gate.

 

[prism]

So, does this make an excuse for sinners?

Good, so it's by their actions that they will be judged.


No! Because by their own sins they stand condemned and guilty before God. They also reject God willingly and suppress the truth. Why? because they belong to the prince of the air and do His will.

Neither can anyone make a charge against God for whom He has Mercy and has Compassion.

God gave to the Son His people to redeem (John 10). And His sheep hear his voice believe and follow him.


So, you disagree that God's election of sinners is not merciful?

Doesn't Paul answer this in Romans? You fail to see, that God doesn't need to save anyone, but He does, out of sheer Mercy. He chooses who to save, not fallen sinners. The Arminian view calls election a violation of man's free will, and that it's up to man to decide if he goes to heaven or hell. Okay, let's look at this view. Does a sinner receive any Grace prior to making a decision or do they have the ability without the Holy Spirit to believe? In your view how does one come to faith? By hearing the Gospel? If so, then why do only some believe while others reject it? If both fully understand what's at stake, why do some reject God? Are they missing something, are the ones who believe better people and do good things and thats why they believe?

Please explain this for us.​

Well one is a humanistic viewpoint with a lofty view of man. The other is by Grace Alone!

I hope you all realise on the whole I am playing devil's advocate in my questions. I do not ascribe to the Arminian point of view.

 

[John Bauer]

I hope you all realise on the whole I am playing devil's advocate in my questions. I do not ascribe to the Arminian point of view.

I don't know about anyone else, but I knew that.

 

[prism]

There are only two gates. The wide one. And the narrow one. Only those predestined to belong to Christ go through the narrow one. It is their destiny to go through the narrow gate. The destiny of the rest is the wide gate.

I adhere to the saying, "The Way is as narrow as the cross is wide".

 

[Hazelelponi]

I hope you all realise on the whole I am playing devil's advocate in my questions. I do not ascribe to the Arminian point of view.

It's helpful to see the arguments, especially in a place with less noise

I appreciate you.

People keep saying what exists now is called something else. Is real Arminianism closer to us and therefore more confusing?

There's a person elsewhere that I once discussed with who seemed so close as to only be arguing semantics at the time.

 

[John Bauer]

I get that but is His choice arbitrary?

A succinct response to this occurred to me: "It is not arbitrary but covenantally mediated."

 

[John Bauer]

People keep saying [the Arminianism that] exists now is called something else. Is real Arminianism closer to us and therefore more confusing?

Yes, classical Arminianism is much closer to us than the Pelagian heresy known as Provisionism.

From a classical Arminian theology that was still recognizably Augustinian on depravity, to the heretical Provisionism of today which affirms moral ability, the family tree of Arminianism fans out along two axes:

• How seriously one takes original sin (from full bondage to partial handicap to moral neutrality).
  
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• How one construes the grace that enables faith (from Wesleyan prevenient grace, to Molinist middle-knowledge, to Baptistic corporate-election, to Finneyan universal opportunity).

From Philipp van Limborch in the 17th century to Leighton Flowers of today, the line is clear: the deeper the suspicion of inherited moral inability, the thinner "grace" becomes—finally collapsing into nothing more than the external offer of the gospel.

The Remonstrants, Wesleyans, and contemporary classical Arminians still insist on an inward prevenient work that actually enables the will. They remain synergists, but their views are not "grace-as-opportunity" schemes.

Here is a genealogical sketch of the Arminian family tree (generated by ChatGPT):

Approx. dates	“Species”	Leading voices	Doctrinal markers (over-against Calvinism)	Later trajectory
1588–1609	Classical Arminianism	Jacobus Arminius	Total depravity admitted; prevenient grace required; election conditioned on foreseen faith; universal atonement; perseverance left open.	Students draw up the 1610 Remonstrance.
1610–1625	Early Remonstrant Arminianism	Johannes Wtenbogaert, Simon Episcopius	Five Articles: conditional election, unlimited atonement, total depravity, resistible grace, conditional perseverance.	Condemned at Dort (1618-19); Remonstrant Church survives in the Dutch Republic.
1640–1700	High Remonstrant Rationalism	Philipp van Limborch, Étienne de Courcelles	Softens original sin, denies imputation, shifts to moral-government atonement; embraces Cartesian rationalism.	Marginalized after the Enlightenment; influence resurfaces via English Latitudinarians.
1611–present	General / Free-Will Baptist Arminianism	Thomas Helwys → Free Will Baptists (U.S.)	Keeps classical soteriology but ties it to believer’s baptism, congregational polity, and conditional security.	Continues today as “Classical Arminianism.”
1738–present	Wesleyan Arminianism	John Wesley, John Fletcher	Adds universal prevenient grace; stresses resistible grace; possibility of entire sanctification (“perfect love”).	Generates Methodist connexion, Holiness churches, and many Pentecostal bodies.
1821–1875	Revivalist / Finneyite Arminianism	Charles Finney	Rejects original sin in favor of moral-government theory; salvation secured by the sinner’s decision.	Shapes New-Measure revivalism and much of nineteenth-century American evangelicalism.
1867–present	Holiness-Pentecostal Arminianism	Phoebe Palmer, A. M. Hills → early Pentecostals	Second-blessing perfectionism and (later) post-conversion Spirit-baptism; remains Wesleyan on depravity and resistible grace.	Nazarene, Wesleyan, and Pentecostal denominations.
1960s–present	Corporate-Election Arminianism	F. Leroy Forlines, J. Kenneth Grider	Election of Christ/the church corporate; individuals participate by faith; classical depravity and prevenient grace retained.	Common among Free Will Baptists and some evangelicals.
mid-1990s–present	Open-Theist Arminianism	Clark Pinnock, Greg Boyd	God knows exhaustively what can be known; future libertarian choices indeterminate even to God.	Creates intra-Arminian debate; largely confined to academic circles.
1980s–present	Molinist–Arminian Convergence	William Lane Craig, Ken Keathley	Conditional election grounded in middle knowledge; libertarian freedom safeguarded by counterfactuals, not bare foreknowledge.	Popular in analytic apologetics.
2012–present	Southern Baptist “Provisionism”	Leighton Flowers, David Allen	Denies inherited moral inability; atonement itself “provides” universal capacity to believe; no prevenient grace needed.	Often judged semi- or neo-Pelagian in Reformed critique.

 

[Hazelelponi]

Yep he was a classical Arminian then, the first kind I actually think, if I remember the discussion rightly anyway.

Here is a genealogical sketch of the Arminian family tree (generated by ChatGPT):

 

[prism]

A succinct response to this occurred to me: "It is not arbitrary but covenantally mediated."

How does that play out in the light of Eph 1:4-5?

 

[prism]

Yes, classical Arminianism is much closer to us than the Pelagian heresy known as Provisionism.

I wonder if that is the result of a secularization of the world seeping its way into the Church?

 

[prism]

(Open Theist-Arminian view)..:God knows exhaustively what can be known; future libertarian choices indeterminate even to God.

Hardly...

(Psa 139:2) You know my sitting down and my rising up; You understand my thought afar off.
(Psa 139:3) You comprehend my path and my lying down, And are acquainted with all my ways.
(Psa 139:4) For there is not a word on my tongue, But behold, O LORD, You know it altogether.

 

[makesends]

I wonder if that is the result of a secularization of the world seeping its way into the Church?

Sort of. It is more, I think, a result of the general modern self-deterministic mentality, which ranges from "everything is about me" to "I am capable of total truth".

 

[Hazelelponi]

Sort of. It is more, I think, a result of the general modern self-deterministic mentality, which ranges from "everything is about me" to "I am capable of total truth".

What do you mean by capable of total truth? Do you mean capable of accurately getting at least all the main points correct (and some small ones too perhaps) as a body of believers or do you mean something else?

 

[prism]

Sort of. It is more, I think, a result of the general modern self-deterministic mentality, which ranges from "everything is about me" to "I am capable of total truth".

Self/man at the center rather than God.

 

[makesends]

What do you mean by capable of total truth? Do you mean capable of accurately getting at least all the main points correct (and some small ones too perhaps) as a body of believers or do you mean something else?

They think it is possible for a human to iterate something comprehensively, without dependence even on Scripture. It is a form of humanocentrism common with most of the unsaved, which considers us the arbiters of truth. You will hear such questions as, "If a tree falls in the wilderness and nobody is there to hear it, did it make a sound?" (and in, "The way of proper valid physics depends on our ability to see what the truth is." --granted, that is my words for it, but they express it with notions such as 'particles popping in and out of existence', and 'Schrödinger's Cat is neither (or both) alive nor (and) dead'. It is ridiculous, and they know it, yet they build a math on probability, when probability is only in our lack of knowledge. God knows precisely everything. There is no question in his mind what is going to happen. I could be wrong, but I have yet, even from Calvinists and the Reformed who subscribe to quantum physics, a valid reason to believe that anything can happen except precisely what God causes to happen, in EVERY meticulous detail. They think the fact only is decided by what is known [by humans]. Yet they themselves say that all time is "simultaneously" existent, which denies the notion that anything can happen except whatever actually does happen. But I digress. Sorry (well, not really sorry).)

"Capable of Total Truth" considers it possible for humans to produce and to understand, in this life, precisely what God means by what he says in Scripture. To me it is ridiculous to think so. We are "Puppies wandering about in an operating theatre"; we are producing what CS Lewis called, "...the babble we think we mean." We don't know what we are talking about. But some do have much better statements and understanding than some others, based on the Truth --Scripture, Reason, and on Christ himself.

Edit: Let me add a bit, upon re-reading your question. We can get a main point correct, even to the exact copy of the words of Scripture. But we have a LONG way to go before we understand it how God does. We not only fall short in our ignorance and temporal view of things, and even in our tendency to rebel and be self-centered, but we fall short in our less-than-Godhood. God is not discovering himself, but we will always be discovering him, in Heaven. Reality depends on him, and not on anything else.

 

[John Bauer]

How does that play out in the light of Eph 1:4-5?

The finite verb—ἐξελέξατο (exeleksato, "he chose")—is an aorist middle indicative. It is modified by the aorist active participle προορίσας (proorisas, "having predestined"), which functions adverbially. Because both forms are aorist, the default assumption in Koine Greek is simultaneity, not temporal sequence. Since the participle is adverbial and depends syntactically on the finite verb, it is treated as modal (i.e., explaining how the action of the main verb is carried out), not temporal. In other words, election is expressed through God's predestining work. On syntactical grounds, election is presented as the primary act, while predestination names the mode and outcome through which election is realized.

Yes, classical Arminianism is much closer to us than the Pelagian heresy known as Provisionism.

I wonder if that is the result of a secularization of the world seeping its way into the church?

That is a question for someone else to answer, for I reject the category of "secular" entirely.

 

[Ladodgers6]

I hope you all realise on the whole I am playing devil's advocate in my questions. I do not ascribe to the Arminian point of view.

Oh, good. Good to know. One thing I have come to understand on the Election between Monergistic & Synergistic theologies is this. Synergistic school of thought is that God enables sinners to make a decision for their fate. Some go further saying that God chooses people who will believe apart from Grace. Both are contrary to Scripture. This method or mode of thinking obscures the good news message of the Gospel. How? They make the Gospel another set of to do's in order to be saved. Just like the false apostles were trying to do with the Galatians.

God's Election brings about our Redemption in Christ by the effective drawing of people to himself through the gifts of repentance and faith that are applied by the Holy Spirit. This is not human effort but a divine one!​

 

[prism]

That is a question for someone else to answer, for I reject the category of "secular" entirely.

But you do believe the world influences the church? What would you express it?