Is Arminianism heresy?

The Arminian scheme necessarily fails by making man guilty and sinful, to go as partner with God in his own salvation. But if it be true as scripture plainly declares, that man is dead in trespasses and sins, not the Gentile only but the favoured Jew too, that question is decided. Arminianism is farther from the truth than Calvinism.

Arminius denied that man was beyond the power to help himself, and contended that he could by exercising his own free will improve himself, and that at least he had the power to accept the good and refuse the evil, to exercise faith in Christ, or reject Him. This is generally termed the doctrine of "free will." Whether Arminius realized it or not, his doctrine had much of the Pelagian error in it. Let us consider Pelagius and his doctrine.

Arminius may not have realized how much he borrowed from the fatal scheme of Pelagius, nor how much he taught that which is one of the most natural weeds to grow in the human heart - that which in substance exalts the first man and sets aside the second Man, the Lord from heaven. (All was lost and condemned in the first man, and the believer in Christ is now seen in the second Man - he is a new creature in Christ.) Arminius may have been actuated largely from a desire to refute the excesses of Calvinism, and there are many. These we purpose, the Lord willing, to bring before our readers next month.

In short then not only not Paul but no other inspired writer ever speaks of "eternal reprobation;" it is merely a dream of a certain school. So the curse of God follows, instead of causing, the impious ways of men. Arminianism is wholly astray no doubt in reducing God's election to a mere foresight of good in some creatures; but Calvinism is no less erroneous in imputing the evil lot of the first Adam race to God's decree. They both spring from analogous roots of unbelief: Calvinism reasoning, contrary to scripture, from the truth of election to the error of eternal reprobation; Arminianism rightly rejecting that reprobation but wrongly reasoning against election. Like other systems they are in part true and in part false — true in what they believe of scripture, false in yielding to human thoughts outside scripture: happy those, who are content as Christians with the truth of God and refuse to be partisans on either side of men! Our wisdom is to have our minds open to all scripture, refusing to go a hair-breadth farther.

Leave it to Arminians to preach man's freewill and power to turn, if not to do good. We know that we were slaves of Satan and dead in sins: a state incompatible with their bad doctrine. Leave it to Calvinists to preach election to the world, which can do no good to the lost but only injure them by accepting it in a fatalistic way, while still under the enemy's bondage. They are alike enamoured of their doctrines, true but wholly unsuitable in the latter case, and quite false in the former one. Be content with Christ and Christianity, which are divine. Arminianism and Calvinism are human and may be left for men to squabble about, instead of simply following (as all Christians ought) the word which glorifies Christ by the Spirit, and delivers the believer that cleaves to Him from the narrowness and the error of all human systems.

Take this evidence of it:- Calvinists and Arminians contend with no small acrimony in their common assumption that purchase and redemption are the same thing. He who holds to scripture learns the difference which they ignore. They do not see that the Christian is both bought and redeemed, and that the unbeliever, though not redeemed, is bought, Confounding the two, they cannot convince any but themselves; the Christian who discriminates them is assured that all are bought, even the most wicked (as in 2 Peter 2:1), and that the believer has redemption in Christ, the forgiveness of sins through His blood. Man, whether he believes or not, was purchased by the Lord, is bound to own Him, and is preached to ("all men" and "everywhere") that he may repent and believe the gospel of salvation. Those who believe are by faith forgiven their sins, and enter the family of God as His children, comforted to know their redemption as well as their election by sovereign grace. All the evil was theirs, all the good is of God which for us turns on faith in Christ.

Arminianism, on the contrary, sees little else than the fact of man's responsibility, often to the total exclusion of God's sovereign and gracious work by His Spirit in the souls of men. Man is a free and unfettered being in the exercise of his own will: hence anything is lawful that will persuade him to exert the force of his will in the right direction.

If we once realize the full extent of that ruin into which sin has plunged us, we shall be delivered from the "Arminian" extreme, and shall recognize that the sovereign action of God in choosing us and drawing us by the compelling power of His Spirit was our only hope. Instead of quarrelling with this side of the truth, it will bow our hearts in grateful worship before Him.

Mr. Trench may think all this dangerous. I reply, there is no worse, nor so dangerous, an extreme as denying scripture, and putting your own good sense in its place. If he takes the trouble to read Hebrews 9, 10, he will find that it is a careful contrast of the divine truth of purging the conscience once for all with his repeated clearings and forgivenesses; and he will do better to trust God's care of His own honour, than be devising new muniments for its protection. All his statement means is, that he holds Wesleyan or Arminian doctrine instead of a true view of the gospel; and he is so little informed in truth, that he is not aware of it. If he seeks a guard against abuse of it, he will find it, not in the lowering of truth and grace, but in such a chapter as Romans 6, and the truth that, if we are Christians, we are dead to sin and alive to God; and, I may add, if the power of the word through grace be not sufficient — for that may be the case, and his system will not help it — in that, of which he can know nothing, the just scriptural discipline of the Church of God.

For on the other side the Arminians are in error who apply συμμόρφους τῆς εἰκόνος τοῦ υἱοῦ αὐτοῦ (conformed to the image of His Son) to holiness, as verse 30 abundantly confirms. For while foreknowledge, predestination, calling, and justification are set out in regular order, the series is suddenly closed by the words "but whom he justified, those he also glorified," without one word about that spiritual conformity which we all confess to be a necessary condition in the salvation of a soul.

What a pity to fall under these systems of men, as one may call the peculiarities of Calvinists or Arminians! For one only blames their peculiarities, not the truth which they hold as Christians. There are dear saints of God among both; but they both suffer not a little, from the Arminian not giving sufficient glory to God's grace in life eternal, and from the Calvinist not leaving sufficient value to communion, which is often followed by uncertainty about his own election. As one of them said, "If you do not doubt about yourself, I doubt about you." Their tendency is to slur their sins or to set up a school of doubt. It was a pious man who so spoke, and he wrote many hymns; and I can but hope the hymns are better than the doctrine. For such doubting is abominable, unworthy not only of a Christian but of Christ still more. It practically denies the gospel, which proclaims salvation by God's grace, and calls for our peaceful enjoyment of it. Hence in point of fact Calvinists generally, though with bright exceptions, are weak as to the gospel. They are occupied with election, rather than with God's love to the world, to say nothing of the provision of grace for their own souls. Election has a too absorbing place in their creed, which makes it a sort of servant-of-all-work. But all this falls miserably short of God's grace and truth. In Christ there is room for everything true that both Calvinists and Arminians hold, and for a good deal more which neither holds. It is a pity that saints of God do not drop these partial schemes of doctrine, cleaving only to God's revelation, accepting it wholly, and eschewing every substitute for it. Christianity has ample room for the widest feeling and for the soundest judgment, and in short for everything that faith is bound to receive from God, or that love is free to achieve for His glory.