Tim Suffield.com

I’ve been thinking about Arminianism lately. Not in a ‘isn’t this theological salvific system interesting’ way, more in a ‘isn’t it sad what you can’t believe if you’re going to hold this and be consistent’ way.

There’s lots of things you have to chuck out.

The Imputation of Righteousness - it doesn’t fit in an Arminian system that our righteousness is Jesus’ and has nothing to do with us. That would remove the necessity of our freewill choice by giving too much power to God. A legalistic system has little place for a doctrine that says you can’t righteous yourself. It also has little place for something that disputes sanctification by works.

Human Depravity - when you say that people have the power to choose to move towards God, bizarrely enough, you cause political problems as you have to assume that people are fundamentally good. People are not fundamentally good, Arminianism fails to deal with the world as we see it. It fails to deal adequately with the fall and it pretty much ignores sin.

The sovereignty of God - this is the main reason no evangelical is an even remotely consistent Arminian. If you believe God answers prayer, then you believe that God is sovereign. If you believe that God can’t save us without our assent, you deny that God is sovereign. An Arminian can’t expect answered prayer. The Arminian God is a weakling, you have to work with him in order to save yourself. He can’t do it on his own. This is probably why Arminianism is so given to Open Theism or Process Theology.

Grace - fairly obviously, since Arminianism is a system of works-righteousness, it chucks grace out the window. In case it isn’t obvious to you: it’s a system of works righteousness in that it has something working along with grace in order to save you, that is your human freewill, in this way it’s a ’synergistic’ system. Something works along with God. The thing is, when you have to perform a work in order to allow grace to be effective, it’s not really a gift anymore, is it?

Jesus’ Glory - this is a big one. When you say something other than Jesus can save you, or can take part in your saving, and that includes your human freewill decision for God (not that you’re able to make one), you rob Jesus of glory. The Bible has a word for that. It’s sin. Of course, Arminians have chucked that out of the boat too. Anything that comes before Jesus stops Jesus from being the all-conquering, all-powerful, saving king of heaven and makes him something much less. The Arminian Jesus is not glorious and does not demand worship. He doesn’t demand a lot really, he’s a lot like an ineffectual self-help guru. He’s alright if you take his advice.

Jesus’ character - the Arminian Jesus, for the reasons just discussed, isn’t a saviour. Because you save yourself, he doesn’t do it. He’s a bit of a nonentity, really.

Worship - for the same reasons, the Arminian Jesus demands no worship. He hasn’t really done anything to make you worship him, he’s just stood there shouting ‘come to me.’ He hasn’t come and got you out of the pit. He’s a rather English chap, he doesn’t demand a lot, really. The real Jesus demands our worship because he’s glorious with a Revelation 19 glory, he’s frightening and we have no choice but to bow before his majesty. He’s not a nice chap who suggests things, he’s a powerful saviour who grabbed my neck and pulled me out of the pit.

More worship - Arminians can’t have good prayers or songs. All the best songs are reformed. Basically, Jesus hasn’t saved them from anything or by anything. They didn’t have much of a problem. Oh, maybe there was a bit of sin, but they could sort it out with a bit of advice. Not really a lot all that praise-worthy there.

Sin - since they chuck out Luther’s bound will, they make little of sin. We aren’t dead in sin, so it isn’t a big problem really, is it? If we were dead in sin, we wouldn’t be able to pull ourselves up by our own bootstraps.

The Bible - Arminianism requires some pretty big hermeneutical jumps. To be fair, Calvinism has its problems, but they seem far more surmountable since its problems aren’t that when its philosophical system is extended as it must be it bears little resemblance to some of the Bible’s teaching.

Intellectualism - Arminianism is simple. It doesn’t make an adequate account of what the Bible teaches, but it is simple. It’s attractive. You can see why. It makes sense to the world, and thus to anyone newly bought out of the world. Most new Christians are Arminians before they’re lovingly and carefully taught better, or before they read better for themselves. The thing is, Arminianism is in part to blame for the anti-intellectualism of evangelicalism today. They reject Calvinism without knowing what it is. They don’t really care what it is. Calvinism is a more complicated system - since it’s reformation doctrine, and sola scriptura is dear to it is, it has to make itself fit to all the Bible’s teaching. This requires some complicated positing, like the problem of God’s universal salvific will, we then have to posit two wills in God. Complicated. Arminians reject this due to a misunderstanding of Luther’s clarity of scripture.

In conclusion, bad doctrine saddens me.

It’s good to be Reformed.

This entry was posted on Friday, February 2nd, 2007 at 10:51 am and is filed under Reflections, Heresy And Such. You can subscribe via RSS 2.0 feed to this post's comments. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.