The Arminian wants to have it both ways

cih1355 · #1 (**permalink**) 03-14-2008, 06:38 AM

I have been reading the book, Why I am Not An Arminian, by Robert Peterson and Michael Williams. They point out an inconsistency in Arminian theology. They say, "Arminians insist that the faith that God foresees in us is not meritorious. It should not be thought of as a work, an earning of salvation in some way, for it is enabled by grace and is a response to grace. While the intention here is to reject any notion of salvation by works, a salvation by merit, Arminius's doctrine of election through foreseen faith, cannot fully escape the allegation that merit is intrinsic to his understanding of salvation. John Frame states the Calvinist analysis here most succinctly: 'The Arminian wants to have it both ways. He wants to say that faith has no merit, but he also wants to say that our faith somehow motivates God to save us, that God chooses us on the basis of our choosing Him. But if faith motivates God to save us, then it must have merit in His eyes.'(pp.113-114)."

Semper Fidelis · #2 (**permalink**) 03-14-2008, 07:31 AM

Indeed!

When it comes right down to it, what do Arminians always complain about? They complain that the Biblical notion of grace is not fair. Why does God find fault, they argue, unless every man has the same capability, given the same opportunity, to respond to grace?

They run into a number of additional problems:

Why does God give some an opportunity and not others?
Why, given the same opportunity, do they respond while others do not?
Is there not some quality of intelligence or "desire for good" in them that the stubborn rebel sitting next to them folding his arms lacks?
God knows future decisions, but does not control them in any way, but "peers down the corridors of time" at "free" human decisions like a movie. To give preference and enable one man to respond over another is abitrary according to the Arminian and "unfair". Why then does the Arminian pray for his loved ones that God would reveal Himself to them? Do they not recognize that, to do so, God would be violating their principles of fairness?

If that doesn't seem bad enough, the problem I have with Arminianism is, ultimately, how fatalistic it is and how powerless God is once He has set the universe into motion. It's practically Deistic in order to be consistent. Let me set the table more clearly:

God knows the future exhaustively. He knows the beginning from the end.
Man's will is unaffected by God and election is based upon God's knowing how a man will decide ahead of time.

Given those two parameters, God "saw" what would happen when He decided to create. He saw all human actions that would occur, both good and evil, and how each human decision (that He didn't control) would unfold. He knew that Bob would like the Gospel but Sally would reject it. He knew Hitler would murder 6 millions Jews and Mother Teresa would be kind to orphans and widows. All the decisions made by human beings were not according to anything He "controlled" but merely according to the completely free choices of the human agents.

So, He creates.

And the Universe is set in motion.

And every free human decision unfolds exactly as He knew it would when He watched it back in eternity past but He has no control over a single human decision as it unfolds. He just watches it occur, in the moment, exactly as He foresaw. His only intervention (answers to prayer, destroying Sodom, etc) is exactly according to the script that He now *must follow* because He foresaw that He would do it. Indeed, God is merely an actor in the very "plot" He saw unfolding as He looked down the corridors of history to "learn" what human decisions He would be impelled to respond to. Man becomes the determiner of God's actions rather than the other way around. The Potter looks down the corridors of time to ask the clay what kind of vessel he will be and then shapes the vessel according to the design that the clay chose for itself.

-------OR---------

If you don't like that Universe and God, you can let God off the hook for setting into motion a fatalistic Universe and become an Open Theist. You only have to jettison the exhaustive foreknowledge thing then but you get to keep the *all important* libertine free will.

-------OR---------

You can simply be like most Evangelicals who don't even worry about the nature of God and are sucked in by the facile arguments of a Dave Hunt who wants to simply carp on the Biblical conception of God's decree without answering to the Universe and God he just created with his un-Biblical pre-suppositions. That's where most live. The deepest they'll ever get is saying: "Well, we're not like Calvinists where God controls people. God created us to love Him and not be robots!"

Backwoods Presbyterian · #3 (**permalink**) 03-14-2008, 07:43 AM

Davidius · #4 (**permalink**) 03-14-2008, 10:05 AM

to Rich. It's amazing how most Arminian arguments sound like they've been taken directly out of Romans 9. How anyone can read that chapter and not give up his Arminianism is beyond me. Aside from clearly stating God's sovereignty and the doctrine of election, Paul clearly has a debate with an imaginary interlocutor that would proceed almost exactly like any discussion one of us would have with an Arminian. What more do they want?!

A5pointer · #5 (**permalink**) 03-14-2008, 10:18 AM

It kind of cracks me up when they jump up and down swearing that there is no merit in their correct choice to believe. No matter how you show that it is an unavoidable conclusion they just pound pulpit and say

"it ain't so".