What is Arminianism?

Question 7108

Arminian theology is the other great system in the English-speaking Protestant world, and it is almost as frequently misrepresented as Calvinism. Many who reject Calvinism assume they must therefore be Arminian, and many Calvinists use the word as a synonym for shallow thinking. Neither assumption survives contact with the actual documents.

I am not an Arminian, and I want to explain why while giving Arminian theology a fair hearing. There is a great deal in it that I agree with, and its central concerns about the character of God and the genuineness of the gospel invitation are concerns I share.

Where Arminian Theology Came From

Jacob Arminius, or Jakob Hermanszoon, was a Dutch pastor and professor at Leiden who died in 1609. He had been trained in the prevailing Reformed theology of his day and was asked to defend it against critics. The uncomfortable outcome was that in studying the material he became persuaded that parts of the system could not be sustained from Scripture, particularly its account of predestination.

It is worth saying that Arminius was not a liberal, a rationalist or a semi-Pelagian, whatever his opponents claimed. He held to the total corruption of human nature by sin, the necessity of grace prior to any human response, justification by faith alone, and the authority of Scripture. Arminian theology in its original form is a thoroughly Protestant system, not a halfway house to Rome.

After his death his followers issued the Remonstrance of 1610, five articles setting out their position. The Synod of Dort answered these between 1618 and 1619, and the resulting five counter-articles became the backbone of what is now called Calvinism. Historically, then, the two systems were born as a pair, each defined against the other.

What the Remonstrance Actually Said

The five articles are more modest than caricature suggests. Election is of those who believe, foreseen by God. Christ died for all people, though only believers benefit. Human beings can do nothing genuinely good without the grace of the Spirit being at work first. That grace can be resisted. And whether a believer can finally fall away was left, in the original document, as a matter needing further study from Scripture.

That last point is often forgotten. The first generation of Arminian theology did not assert that Christians can lose their salvation; it declined to settle the question. Later Arminians, particularly in the Wesleyan tradition, did take the position that apostasy is possible, and that has become the popular association.

Prevenient Grace

The foundation of Arminian theology is prevenient grace, meaning grace that goes before. Because sin has ruined human capacity, nobody can turn to God unaided. So God, in the words of John Wesley, works in every person a measure of grace that restores enough capacity to respond to the gospel when it is heard.

This is the point most misunderstood by critics. Arminian theology does not teach that human beings have a natural ability to choose God. It teaches that God graciously restores an ability that sin destroyed, so that the response, when it comes, is entirely owing to grace even though it is genuinely the person’s own. Wesley was emphatic that all is of grace.

My own position is close to this in substance while avoiding the formal category. I hold that God takes the initiative in every case, through the Spirit’s conviction and the preached word, and that a person genuinely may respond or refuse. Where I hesitate over prevenient grace is that it functions as a systematic device, a universal deposit of ability, and I do not find Scripture describing it in those terms. More in the treatment of prevenient grace.

Conditional Election

Arminian theology holds that election is conditional upon foreseen faith. God, knowing all things, sees who will believe and elects them accordingly. The choice is real and eternal, but its ground lies in God’s foreknowledge of the response rather than in an unconditional decree.

The appeal of this is obvious. It keeps human responsibility intact and makes sense of the universal invitation. Its difficulty, and it is a real one, is that election becomes in effect a divine ratification of human decision, which is not quite the note struck by Ephesians 1 where the emphasis falls so heavily on God’s purpose and pleasure.

I read the material differently again. Ephesians 1 speaks of election in Christ, and I take that as the determination of God to have a people in His Son rather than as either an unconditional selection of individuals or a foreseen tally of believers. The corporate reading relieves a good deal of the pressure both systems feel at this point. See what predestination means in Scripture.

Unlimited Atonement

Here Arminian theology and I agree entirely, and it is the point on which I would defend it against Calvinist criticism without hesitation. Christ died for all people. His death was sufficient for every human being without exception, and the universal language of Scripture means what it appears to mean.

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). He gave Himself a ransom for all. God so loved the world. He tasted death for everyone. The provision is unlimited; the application is to those who receive it through faith.

That distinction between provision and application is the key, and it belongs neither to Calvinism nor exclusively to Arminian theology. It is simply what the texts require, and it accounts for the universal and the particular language without forcing either. The argument is set out at length in the extent of the atonement.

Resistible Grace

Arminian theology holds that the Spirit’s work in drawing a person can be refused. This seems to me plainly what Scripture describes. Stephen charges his hearers with always resisting the Holy Spirit. Jesus laments over Jerusalem, saying you were not willing. Paul warns believers not to grieve the Spirit, which would be a curious instruction if the Spirit’s operations were unaffected by human response.

The Calvinist reply distinguishes an outward call which may be resisted from an inward effectual call which may not, and while that distinction is coherent it is not one I can locate in the text. On this point Arminian theology reads the narrative material more naturally, and I think it is right.

What must be guarded is the direction of the initiative. Resistibility does not mean God waits passively for permission. It means the drawing is real, powerful and prior, and yet does not override the person. That is a harder thing to state neatly than either system would like, which is probably a mark in its favour.

Can a Believer Finally Fall Away?

This is where I part company decisively. Classical Wesleyan Arminian theology holds that a believer who abandons faith may forfeit salvation, and it appeals to the warning passages in Hebrews, to the branches cut off in John 15, and to Paul’s fear of being disqualified.

I hold eternal security firmly, and I ground it entirely in God rather than in the believer’s constancy. Security rests on God’s promises, on the finished work of Jesus, on the indwelling Spirit and on the sealing of the Spirit (Ephesians 1:13-14). He keeps me. If my continuance depended on my own faithfulness, no honest Christian would sleep, because the believer is simply not that reliable.

The warning passages need handling case by case rather than in bulk, and I take them seriously without concluding that they threaten genuine believers. Some address apostates who were never converted. Some carry the force of a hypothetical argument rather than a prediction. Some turn on conditional constructions in the Greek where the particle does not function as a simple if. What I will not do is build a doctrine of losable salvation on passages whose interpretation is contested. See what eternal security rests on.

What Arminian Theology Gets Right

It takes the universal offer of the gospel at face value, and I think that is a considerable achievement. When Scripture says God desires all people to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth, Arminian theology does not need to redefine all. When Ezekiel records God protesting that He takes no pleasure in the death of the wicked, the sentence can stand as written.

It also protects the genuineness of human responsibility, which the Bible assumes on every page. People are commanded to repent, held accountable for refusing, and warned of consequences. A system that must explain away that accountability has a problem, and Arminian theology does not have it.

And it has borne remarkable fruit. The Wesleyan revival, the modern missionary movement in much of its scope, the abolitionist campaigns, the holiness tradition’s seriousness about sanctification: a great deal of this came from within Arminian theology. Whatever the systematic weaknesses, this is not a tradition that produced spiritual laziness.

Where I Part Company with Arminian Theology

The chief difficulty is the one already named. Grounding security in the believer’s continued faith relocates confidence from God’s faithfulness to mine, and the pastoral consequences are severe. I have sat with people from that tradition who lived in genuine terror of losing what they had, and I do not believe Scripture leaves the believer in that condition.

There is a second difficulty about the structure of prevenient grace, which functions as a universal remedy Scripture does not describe in those terms. And a third about conditional election, which in practice makes God’s eternal purpose contingent on the creature in a way Ephesians 1 does not encourage.

None of these makes Arminian theology heretical, and I want to be clear about that. It affirms the deity of Jesus, the substitutionary death, justification by faith alone, and the necessity of grace. The disagreements are real and they are within the family.

Why I Am Neither Calvinist Nor Arminian

Both systems are attempting to resolve a tension Scripture leaves standing. Calvinism resolves it by subordinating human responsibility to divine determination. Arminian theology resolves it by making the divine purpose responsive to foreseen human choice. Each achieves coherence at the cost of some texts.

I would rather live with the tension. Scripture asserts that God takes every initiative and that people genuinely respond or refuse; that the atonement is provided for all and applied to believers; that the saved are eternally secure and that warnings are given in earnest. I hold these together without a system to reconcile them, which is intellectually less tidy and, I think, more honest to the text.

That position is often called Biblicist, and it is where I stand. It is not a refusal to think but a refusal to let a framework do the thinking for me. The comparison of the two systems side by side is set out in Calvinism and Arminianism compared, and the Calvinist half of the picture in what Calvinism teaches.

Arminian Theology and the Wesleyan Inheritance

Most people who encounter Arminian theology today meet it in its Wesleyan form rather than in Arminius. John Wesley took the system and added a strong emphasis on sanctification, including his teaching on entire sanctification or Christian perfection, which Arminius himself never taught.

Wesley’s own writing is worth reading directly, because he is frequently more careful than his critics allow. He insisted that no one has a natural power to turn to God, that all ability is a gift of grace, and that anyone who boasts of his own decision has misunderstood the whole matter. On that point Wesley and Calvin would have agreed more than either side’s followers usually admit.

The Methodist, Nazarene, Salvation Army and much of the Pentecostal tradition stand within this stream, which means Arminian theology has shaped a very large part of world Christianity, including a great deal of its missionary and social reform activity.

Where Arminian Theology Is Wrongly Accused

Three accusations are commonly made and are not fair. The first is that it teaches salvation by works, which it does not; classical Arminian theology holds justification by faith alone as firmly as any Protestant system. The second is that it makes human beings the decisive cause of their own salvation, which misreads prevenient grace. The third is that it denies human corruption by sin, which is simply false.

There is a fourth accusation worth answering, that it makes God’s knowledge dependent on the creature. Classical Arminianism holds full divine foreknowledge; it is open theism, a much later development, that denies it, and open theism is a genuine departure that Arminius would have rejected outright. Paul’s language about God knowing those who are His (2 Timothy 2:19) sits comfortably within the older Arminian framework.

Arminian Theology and Assurance in Practice

The point where I feel the difference most sharply is not in the study but in the hospital ward. A believer facing death needs to know that his standing does not depend on his own constancy, and the strand of Arminian theology that allows for final apostasy cannot give him that assurance without qualification.

In fairness, most Wesleyan pastors handle this far better in practice than the system suggests, pointing the dying to Jesus rather than to their own record. But the doctrine leaves a door ajar that I do not believe Scripture leaves ajar. Jesus said that no one is able to snatch His sheep out of the Father’s hand (John 10:29), and Paul says the Spirit is given as a guarantee of the inheritance.

So my disagreement with Arminian theology at this point is not academic. It concerns what I am able to say to a frightened Christian at two in the morning, and I want to be able to say that God will not let go.

So, now what?

If you have been told that rejecting Calvinism makes you an Arminian, it does not, and you are free to read the texts without either grid. Take an evening with Ephesians 1 and John 6 and then with 1 Timothy 2 and 2 Peter 3, and notice how difficult it is to make either system account for all four comfortably. That difficulty is not a problem to be solved by picking a team. What would your reading of Scripture look like if you stopped trying to make it fit a system somebody else built?

“The Lord is not slow to fulfil his promise as some count slowness, but is patient toward you, not wishing that any should perish, but that all should reach repentance.” 2 Peter 3:9

For Further Study

For those wishing to go further, Roger Olson’s Arminian Theology: Myths and Realities is the best modern statement from within the tradition and corrects a great many misrepresentations. Wesley’s sermons, particularly Free Grace and On Working Out Our Own Salvation, are worth reading directly. On the other side, Charles Ryrie’s Basic Theology gives a clear treatment from the position I occupy, and Lewis Sperry Chafer’s Systematic Theology handles unlimited atonement and eternal security at length. Millard Erickson’s Christian Theology surveys both systems fairly. J. Dwight Pentecost and John Walvoord are useful on the relation of election to God’s wider programme for Israel and the Church, and Arnold Fruchtenbaum’s writing keeps the dispensational distinctions in view throughout.