Some
Assumptions in Arminian Doctrine
A paper related to Sunday School lectures on Romans 8
David H. Linden, University Presbyterian Church, Las Cruces, NM USA, revised
December, 2013
This paper was for the final
Romans class for 2013. We find in chapter 8 a convergence of material where Reformed
doctrine and Arminian teaching differ.
When one young servant of the Lord asked for material on “Arminian
assumptions” – thus the title of this
paper – I decided to write this and make it generally available. Romans 8:31-39
deals with the perseverance of the
saints from a reverse angle, namely God’s preservation
of the saints. Then further, an oft-overlooked surprise lingers for many
Christians in 8:32. There benefits only the elect enjoy are inextricably tied
to all those for whom the Lord Jesus died.
Arminian
Objection 1: If it
is certain that the elect are going to be saved, there is no need for
evangelism. All the elect will be saved no matter what we do. Your Calvinist
doctrine makes for dangerous passivity in reaching the lost.
Response
to Objection 1: We are glad that the command of evangelism
is recognized. In the evangelism of Jesus in John 6:35, He invited sinners to
come to Him. He spoke so that sinners might be saved (John 5:34). At the same
time, the Lord affirmed that there was a number given to Him by the Father, and
that these would come and the others would not (John 6:36,37,44). Jesus
appealed to unbelievers to believe, even while He explained that the reason those
specific ones did not do so was that they were not His sheep given to Him by
His Father (John 10:25-29). The public ministry of Jesus is a model of
evangelism: telling sinners they needed Him; urging them to come to Him, mixed
with affirmations that the ones who would hear are those who were His sheep
(John 10:9). They were His by the gift of the Father even before they believed.
Believing in election did not hamper Jesus’ evangelism.
There
is another feature of evangelism that needs much more attention. For us, the
Great Commission is the command of the Lord to us (Matthew 28:18-20), but for
Christ it was and is the command of the Father to Him. This lies behind John
20:21. In Isaiah 49 the Servant of the Lord received a commission from the
Father assigning Him certain tasks which are underlined below:
And now the LORD says, he who formed me [Christ]
from the womb to be his servant, to bring Jacob back to him; and that Israel
might be gathered to him – for I am honored in the eyes of the LORD, and my
God has become my strength – he says: "It is too light a thing that you
should be my servant to raise up the tribes of Jacob and to bring back the
preserved of Israel; I will make you as a light for the nations, that my
salvation may reach to the end of the earth." Thus says the LORD, the
Redeemer of Israel and his Holy One, to one deeply despised, abhorred by the
nation, the servant of rulers: "Kings shall see and arise; princes, and
they shall prostrate themselves; because of the LORD, who is faithful, the Holy
One of Israel, who has chosen you."
Thus says the LORD: "In a time of favor I have answered you; in a
day of salvation I have helped you; I will keep you and give you as a covenant
to the people, to establish the land, to apportion the desolate heritages
…” (Isaiah 48:5-8).
Christ
was assigned to be a light not only to Israel but to the nations. Since this
responsibility has been given to Christ, there can be no failure. Into this
certainty of success in evangelism Christ has called us in what we call the
Great Commission. The apostles quoted these words to Christ in Isaiah 49 as
applying to them (Acts 13:46-48). In the
time of Isaiah the “Great Commission” was an unseen element in God’s
commission
to Christ. This truth stimulates in us confidence in serving. Because our
service is a result of His obedience, it is not in vain (1 Corinthians 15:58). Gentile
believers were elated that such words as Isaiah 49 were being fulfilled in
their salvation. Luke added, that as many
as were appointed to eternal life believed. (Acts 13:48). The evangelistic
efforts of the apostles were not weakened by their belief in election. They viewed
their ministry as working together
with God (2 Corinthians 6:1), and after saying that, Paul in the next verse
quotes the Father’s commission to Christ in Isaiah 49 again. In Paul’s mind his
evangelistic ministry was tied to the continuing activity of Jesus (“with you
till the end of the age”). He obeys His Father by bringing God’s salvation to
the nations. The greatest encouragement to evangelism is the doctrine of
election, a doctrine of certainty.
Arminian
Objection 2: If God
has decided (or decreed, or determined or predestined) anything that a man will
do, that man’s freedom is limited. If the sovereign rights of God are applied to
how we respond to the gospel, this limits the free actions of men to believe or
not believe. In order for man to be genuinely free, it is necessary that the
sovereign actions of God are not brought to bear in areas of man’s
responsibility. If man’s decisions are not free, man is not what God created
him or her to be. Thus in respect to man’s response, God limits His sovereign
rule. He wants our choice of Christ to be a real choice which we make.
Response
to Objection 2 Arminian Christians are much more likely to emphasize
a limitation on the free actions (or free will) of man. One does not hear the
converse very much – that man’s free actions limit the freedom of God. They sense
that there is really something wrong with that idea. Regrettably, a few
Arminian zealots have gone that far lately (in the Openness of God theology),
causing a strong reaction. Nevertheless, it is still widely held by Arminians
that “you cannot have it both ways; it is one or the other; God’s sovereign
choice and man’s free choice do not co-exist in a man’s decision to be saved.”
You
will notice that the Arminian argument is quite abstract. I daresay that many
Arminian believers feel squeamish when they assert that God cannot determine something.
Yet the instinctive reaction is to think that man is not truly free, if God has
determined anything that a man will surely do. This may be one of the greatest
emotional stumbling blocks among Arminians, one that militates against accepting
the unrestricted right of God as God to do whatever He pleases (Psalm 115:3).
This
is a very sad development among our fellow Christians, because holding to a
reduced role for God, even one God has self-imposed, contributes to uncertainty.
If everything done by comets, cooks, communists, congressmen, and cousins is
within the prior ordination of God, then chance is removed. It is replaced by
God’s all-wise, holy and powerful providence. And for us, since God is our Father
Who loves us, there is no terror. I will give Biblical evidence now, but I hope
the emotional impact that comes from missing a wonderful truth will be
considered.
To
show that God has decreed the free actions of men, all one needs to do is to pick
from a multitude of Biblical examples which show the overlap in God’s sovereign
decisions executed through the un-coerced “free will” of His creatures. Here
are two examples.
1. Judas acted according to his free will in
betraying Christ. He was fully responsible and God did not force him to do it.
He played with sin, and Satan entered into him (John 13:27). Jesus said to His
disciples, “… The Son of Man goes as it is written of him, but woe to that man by
whom the Son of Man is betrayed! It would have been better for that man if he
had not been born" (Mark 14:21). Luke 22:22 adds that the Lord would be
betrayed “as it has been determined”. Judas acted as he chose, and God Who
determined all the events of Jesus’ betrayal used Judas’ sin to accomplish His
holy purpose.
2. Assyria In
Isaiah 10:5-34 Assyria is a tool of God (v.5) sent by Him to punish His wayward
people (v.6). The Assyrian had no intention to serve the God of Israel (v.7),
but he was! From his perspective he was simply pursuing his agenda of conquest (vv.
7-11). Jerusalem would be for him just one more conquest (v.11). Yet all along
it was God using His Assyrian tool to finish His work of chastening Jerusalem
(v.12). When the Assyrian made a long boast of his accomplishments (vv.13,14),
God corrects him, because unknown to him it was God wielding Assyria as His
rod. Assyria cannot boast of the victories given because it was God using that
army for His purpose (v.15). All that Assyria did was wicked, and done of its
own will, but those warriors will be punished (vv.16-19). Whatever God has
decreed will be done (vv. 22,23). What His people should understand is that the
visible onslaught of Assyria (v.24) was the fury of the Lord (my fury
v.25) upon them, and Assyria was simply His instrument. For their sin, all of
which was their own idea, they would be cut down (vv. 26-34).
In
both cases (and many more could be provided!) Judas and the Assyrians acted as
they wished, in pursuit of sinful choices fully consistent with their natures.
Yet in these cases they were doing precisely what God had decreed in the
pursuit of His holy ends (Ephesians 1:11). God does decree all the free actions
of all His creatures without ever making them robots, or forcing them to do
what they really do not want to do. Reading Isaiah 10 repeatedly will relieve
anyone discouraged by what objection 2 asserts.
Arminian
Objection 3: In
election, God simply ratifies the free decision of man whether to accept or
reject Christ. God is fair, treating all of mankind in the same way. Based on
His foreknowledge of what we would do,
He elects to salvation the sinner who will accept the Lord. It is not God Who
chooses for one person to go to heaven and another to go to hell. (That is a horrible
view of God!) Imagine a teaching that someone will go to hell and cannot be
saved, even if he wants to be – all because God made his bad choice for him,
and the poor soul is stuck with disaster.
Response
to Objection 3: I have replied to some of this objection in
#2 above. Note that I have stated the Arminian objection in strong terms to
demonstrate the sense of repugnance that some feel for our view of election. We
seem to diminish the cross of Christ.
Nevertheless on the other side, the awkwardness Arminians feel is aggravated by
so much reference in the Bible to election, and predestination, and God
choosing, even saying in John 15:16,
“You did not chose Me, but I have chosen you …”
They need some way to show that predestination is not really dreadful fatalistic
predestination. Foreknowledge is, they believe, merely a “pre-knowing” by God of
what people would do, so that God does not really predestine anyone, but
rather He chooses them based on the free choice they will eventually make.
Naturally, this strips the impact in God’s choice of all initiative, because
His choice does not determine anything and ours does! Predestination becomes
after-destination. But they find a way to do this, and this way seems to fit
Scripture. Their chief argument for turning predestination from real causation
to simple reaction is connected to a couple of Biblical statements about the
foreknowledge of God.
This
objection is closely tied to Romans 8, “Those whom He foreknew [verb] he also predestined…” (8:29). Their case seems even
more solid in 1 Peter 1:1,2: “ … Peter …
to those who are elect exiles according
to the foreknowledge [noun] of God the Father …” That seems to settle the matter: God knew what
we would do and responded accordingly. The Arminian objection, however, suffers
first from the fact that the New Testament never says concerning His election
of us that He foreknew our decision.
Rather, He foreknew the persons He
would predestine to holiness (Ephesians 1:3,4).
The
second is a greater difficulty for them, because the Arminian argument about
foreknowledge is corrected by the meaning
of the word foreknow when it is
used of the Lord knowing His people.
Both Paul (Romans) and Peter (1 Peter) were Jews who knew the intimate flavor
of the Hebrew word know in personal
relationships. Note that Adam knew
his wife and she conceived. That is not cognitive knowledge. It does not mean
Adam knew Eve’s name and how to spell it. It means Adam took, loved and
embraced his wife (you get the idea) and thus she conceived. We understand a
similar thing in Romans 8:29 so that Paul is saying in effect: “Those God loved
and embraced in advance are the ones He predestined, and those He called …” etc.
This
kind of knowing comes up in Amos 3:1,2: “O people of Israel … You
only have I known of all the families of the earth; therefore I will punish
you for all your iniquities.” The NIV reads, “You only have I chosen…” Amos 3 captures the meaning of
what know means in Romans 8. God was
not saying in Amos that He did not know something about the other nations, or
what they would do. But He did not know those nations in the sense that He did
not embrace them and take them as His people [1].
Arminian
Objection 4: If God
has commanded any action, it is clear that man must be able to do the thing
commanded, or else the command of God for man to do something he cannot do is
irrational and oppressive. Surely this cannot be.
Response
to Objection 4: This is answered in my recent paper for
the Romans class, “Coming in the Back Door”. Man does not have the ability even
to believe in Christ for the salvation of his soul. His native hostility to God
is such that repentance and faith are of no interest to him. For him to be
saved, God must change his heart, and this is what God does in our effectual
calling and new birth. That paper is available to all, already posted on my
website under Election – www.grebeweb.com/linden
In
dealing with us, God does not issue ridiculous commands such as ordering us to
join the cow in jumping over the moon. He says instead, such things as, “Be
holy, for I am holy.” He cannot do otherwise and be true to Himself, and we
cannot comply because we are ourselves. His commands do not imply that we are
able; His Word tells us we are not, yet He does not lower the standard of
righteousness for those who bear His image. In other words, He does not
accommodate our sin, but ever insists on holiness in us. Thankfully, in a
totally new covenant He changes our hearts and enables us to obey. Such ability
does not spring from commandments but from God’s enabling intervention.
Arminian
Objection 5: The
death of Christ is a sacrifice for all, meaning each and every person without
exception and without distinction. The Bible is most clear about this, often
stating “all” related to the death of
Christ, and also saying explicitly that His death was for the whole world (1 John 2:2).
Response
to Objection 5: The
death of Christ is for all peoples. The word all has the sense that it is not confined to one group. It is for
men and women, for young and old, for people of every culture in all parts of
the earth. Note this song to Christ:
"Worthy are you to take the scroll and to open its seals, for you were
slain, and by your blood you ransomed people for God from every tribe and
language and people and nation …” (Revelation 5:9). Surprisingly in Revelation,
this same description of a vast array of persons speaks of those under the sway
of the beast: “Also it was allowed to make war on the saints and to conquer
them. And authority was given it over every tribe and people and language and
nation …” (Revelation 13:7). The whole
earth worshipped the beast (Revelation 13:3,4). Revelation also speaks of those who are loyal
to Christ (14:12). With such sweeping language, we must look to the context to
show who is intended.
That also occurs in 1 John:
Of Christ it says: “He is the propitiation for our sins, and not for ours only
but also for the sins of the whole world.” (1 John 2:2). John is making very clear with
such language that this sacrifice was not for Jews only but for the whole
world. Then in the same letter John comments:
“We know that we are from God, and the
whole world lies in the power of the evil one” (1 John 5:19). The “whole
world” in chapter 5 does not include believers, for we are the Lord’s children
(3:2). In 4:5,6 we are from God, and thus the world does not include us. So who is in mind when this word is used
must be settled by the context. It need not mean the entire population of
earth. When the Jewish leaders complained about the interest so many had in
Jesus, they spoke of it as the world going after Him (John 12:19). They
certainly did not include themselves in that “world”, thus the word does not
always mean every human soul.
The death of Christ in John
19 was a priestly offering. (Hebrews 7:26,27.) Intercession is also a priestly function in
Hebrews 7:25 and Romans 8:34. If Jesus really offered Himself for the sin of
each and every human being, we would expect Him as their priest in John 17 to
pray for those for whom He would die the next day. But in John 17:9 Jesus said
“… I am not praying for the world but for those whom you have given me, for
they are yours.” The Arminian admits that Jesus did not pray for the world –
that is so very plain – but how then would he die for those He declined to pray
for?
If the atonement was for
every soul in the population of the world, and then not all are saved, it must
be limited in power. If it is for
those God intended to save, and it does do so, it is not limited in power but
in its intention. Some Arminian
teachers are quite aware of this challenge to their doctrine, and so they say
that the work of Christ on the cross does not save but makes all persons
salvable. We say the death of Christ in the hands of God is effective to
accomplish His will. We do not think that the sinner makes the cross effective
by his believing, but that the cross is so effective it makes the elect
believe. Jesus died for all our sins, thus He died to deliver us from our lack
of repentance, from our unbelief, even from all the natural resistance we have
to the gospel.
Because the Father gave His
Son for us all, not sparing Him at the cross, He will most certainly and most
graciously give with the gift of His Son “all things” (Romans 8:32). These additional things for “us all” include justification
(8:33), Christ’s intercession (8:34), and the love of God from which we cannot
be separated (8:35,37,39). We are delivered from His wrath (5:9), which simply
means we are saved. And who will be saved? – all those for whom the Father gave
His Son. If the results of the atonement are not universal, neither are the
beneficiaries. Romans 8:32 deserves careful attention.
Arminian
Objection 6: People
can be saved, and then they may lose their salvation by turning away from the
Lord. Thereby they lose Christ and eternal life.
Response to Objection 6 The
Bible does speak of millions of covenant breakers. All of them had a precious spiritual
heritage. Israel, when delivered from Egypt, had seen the power of God before
their very eyes, yet they perished in their sin. This is addressed in Hebrews 3
& 4.
Centuries
after the Exodus Psalm 95 warned Israel of the continuing danger of being lost.
This shows that one can be part of the people of God and yet lose the salvation
promised to them. Hebrews 3 & 4 draws heavily from this psalm. The bulk of
the Israelites in the desert (1 Corinthians 10:5) chose to be hardhearted
(3:7-11, 16). An unbelieving heart will cause one to fall away (3:12), while
those who have truly come to share in Christ will hold their trust and
confidence firm to the end (3:14). What is evident here for those who are not
saved is not their loss of true faith but their persistent unbelief. The gospel
message they heard did not benefit them, because they did not actually believe
and thus they were not saved. Those with faith enter the rest of salvation
(4:3). To enter God’s rest means that such a person will not fall (4:10,11).
They had high
exposure; they were part of the people of God who saw the Egyptian army drown.
They were a holy nation, yet in spite of all this, with callous hearts they
went astray, and so, rejected by God, they could not enter His rest. This is
not an example of losing salvation once possessed, but of losing the salvation offered
but never really received. When the Lord said, “They have not known my ways”
(Psalm 95:10), it means they never ever believed. Later in Hebrews there is a
strong emphasis on the promises of God. The simple response to them is faith,
and faith when real believes before it sees. It also perseveres. (See 10:23,
36; 11:11,13,39.)
Those
who belong to Christ are secure, kept by the power of God (1 Peter 1:3-5).
Nothing can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord (Romans
8:35-39). Judas was the son of destruction (John 17:12). Early in His ministry,
Jesus said of him, “One of you is a devil” (John 6:70). He did not mean that
one day Judas would become a devil, but that he was one already. Making a
distinction between Judas and the other disciples, Jesus said, “… You [the
others] are clean, but not every one of you" (John 13:10). Judas did not
lose the salvation he never had. He was never converted; he failed to receive
the salvation promised. With the other disciples he cast out demons, but the
Lord warned:
"Not everyone who says to me, 'Lord, Lord,'
will enter the kingdom of heaven, but the one who does the will of my Father
who is in heaven. On that day many will say to me, 'Lord, Lord, did we not
prophesy in your name, and cast out demons in your name, and do many mighty
works in your name?' And then will I declare to them, 'I never knew you;
depart from me, you workers of lawlessness.' (Matthew 7:21-23)
Children, … many antichrists have come. Therefore
we know that it is the last hour. They went out from us, but they were not of
us; for if they had been of us, they would have continued with us. But they
went out, that it might become plain that they all are not of us. (1 John 2:18,19)
Arminian
Objection 7: You say
the saving call of God is irresistible. In other words, if God decides a person
is going to be saved, she or he will be no matter what! However, if we cannot accept the gospel on our
own, this means that people are saved or lost apart from their free will
to decide the issue. If that is so, then man has been turned by God into a
robot. God does not turn people into robots; Calvinists do.
Oh,
no, no, no. Man does not gain slavery by God overpowering his rebellion! It is
the opposite; man took on slavery when he sinned. He lost life and freedom.
Death reigns in the lives of unsaved people (Romans 5:14, 17, 21). The sinner is
hostile so that he cannot come, see, hear, or believe (John 3:3,5; 6:44;
8:43,47; 10:26,27; 12:39). Therefore, salvation can only come when
God removes our blindness (2 Corinthians 4:3-6), and mercifully destroys our
wilful resistance; only then we are free. Thanks be to the Lord.
God
may grant repentance (Acts 11:18) leading to a knowledge of the truth, so that
sinners may come to their senses and escape from the snare of the devil, after being captured by him to do his will
(2 Timothy 2:25,26). It is the devil who
makes robots of human beings, not the Lord. God sets sinners free by making us
His servants. When man’s will is enslaved by a vicious foe, and God enters that
heart and transforms his will, He gives the former “robot” freedom (Galatians
5:1). It is a deliverance. The Lord binds Satan (Matthew 12:28,29) and breaks
into His kingdom, there to find His elect and set us free.
Our
Arminian friends have not come to grips with how utterly crippling sin is to
the human heart. The deadness of the sinner’s heart can only be overcome by the
life giving power of God.
Conclusion In Romans 8 a number of themes are closely
related to Calvinist/Arminian differences: the love of Christ from which a believer
cannot be separated, election, man’s depraved hostility to God, and the
specific benefits of the atoning work of Christ. Romans 8 gives assurance and the
reason for it. This certainty is based in God’s commitment to our salvation.
In our disagreements we
must be careful to discover the real view of another Christian. But a
misunderstanding might come because a fellow Christian wishes to defend the
honor of God, as he sees the issues. I think Arminians may have good motives. To
state it their way: Some think it is awful for anyone to present God as so
contradictory that He violates the free will He gave to His creatures. Or, that
a man does not believe for himself. After all, does not God call on all of us
to repent and believe? And maybe worse, why even pursue evangelism when all the
elect will be saved, no matter what we do? This shows, I think, that some
fellow Christians are eager to preserve Biblical truth, yet they miss so much
that Scripture clearly teaches. The Bible brings us to see these doctrines
through God’s eyes. What “makes sense” to our minds misses how sin has affected
the sinner: he does not understand his plight! Arminians miss how wide is the range
of God’s saving grace both at the cross and in our hearts.
The solution is to accept all
that the Lord has said in all of His Word. I think the conclusions reached in
such a study will be: that from the outset God has initiated our salvation and
executed His plan in detail – not just loving us in advance, but calling us,
conquering our hearts, and forgiving our sins because Jesus died to redeem His
people and bring us safely to live with Him forever. The gratitude is ours and
the glory for all things is His.
[1] The Greek verb for foreknow is used five times in the NT. Twice it is used of
people knowing something in advance (cognitive foreknowledge): Acts 26:5 and 2
Peter 3:17. Once it is used of Christ being foreknown (1 Peter 1:20). Then it
is used of persons being foreknown by God in Romans 8:29 and 11:2. The use in
11:2 is of Israel as a corporate body; in 8:29 it is of individuals. The Greek noun
foreknowledge appears twice in the NT (Acts 2:23 and 1 Peter 1:2). In 1 Peter
1:2 it makes sense to interpret this as God electing because of His love in
advance for them. We love Him because He loved us first (1 John 4:19), and we
choose because He foreknew us, not the reverse.