The purpose of these two brief articles is to justify why I do not adopt the theological system that became known in the history of the Christian church as Arminianism, a name due to its defender, James Arminius (1560-1609), in contrast to the opposite system that was named Calvinism, in honor of the great French reformer John Calvin (1509-1564). The present article will reveal to the reader the first reason.
The Arminian system was presented in systematic form to the Dutch church in 1610, by disciples of James Arminius, in the form of five points that synthesized the teachings of the Dutch professor and altered the teachings of the reformers, differing from them not only in terms of emphasis, but of content. The five points of Arminianism presented in the Remonstrance are as follows:
(1) Free Will (or human capacity: man, even fallen, still has the ability to respond by himself to the call of the gospel, coming through his own resources to repent and exercise faith; for the Arminians there is no spiritual death in absolute terms;
(2) Conditional Election (God would not have marked anyone to be saved or lost, but the election before the foundation of the world would be based on divine foreknowledge, which would elect those whom He foresaw would repent and believe, being therefore the set of the elect open, without guaranteeing the security of any person before the end of his history;
(3) General or Unlimited Atonement (Jesus Christ would not have died for specific persons, but for all humanity, merely making it possible for the salvation of any person who, in history, believes in His atoning death, although this is not sufficient to guarantee him absolute security, since salvation depends on perseverance in faith, and it is not known for certain who will persevere to the end;
(4) Resistible Grace (In the Arminian conception, the grace of God can be resisted in the act of salvation and, when the sinner acquiesces to it, even after being "saved", man can resist God in such a way as to come to be lost totally and finally);
(5) Insecurity of Salvation (No one can guarantee that those who are truly regenerated will persevere to the end, that is, a person who is today presumed saved may tomorrow come to lose his salvation). It is good to remember that, from the Arminian system formulated by the Remonstrants, Arminius would disagree with the 5th point, for, despite all his inability to understand what the reformers taught, he never doubted the Perseverance of the Saints.
In 1618, an international council composed of 84 renowned Reformed scholars met in the city of Dort, in Holland, to analyze and respond to the Remonstrants, formulating, in 1619, after seven months of discussions in 154 sessions, the important Canons of Dort, arranged in five chapters whose titles became known as the Five Points of Calvinism, in honor of the great reformer John Calvin. These five points, then, are the summary of Reformed teaching, not only subscribed by John Calvin, but by all historical confessions of faith and Reformed catechisms, namely, Confession of Faith of the Low Countries, Heidelberg Catechism, Second Helvetic Confession and Westminster Confession of Faith, and, as was well demonstrated in the Canons of Dort, reflect the true teaching of the Scriptures reaffirmed by the reformers and denied by the Remonstrants.
The Five Points of Calvinism are as follows:
(1) Total Depravity (Unregenerate men, after the fall, are totally incapable of choosing good concerning spiritual matters, since they are dead in trespasses and sins, being enabled only by a miracle of spiritual resurrection, which occurs at the time of regeneration, see Ef 2:1-10);
(2) Unconditional Election (God, before the foundation of the world, in His eternal and sovereign purpose, according to the counsel of His will, in love elected some sinners to salvation, independent of any merits observed in them, nor even foreknowledge of repentance and faith, see Ef 1.3-12; 2Ts 2.13; Jo 6.37, 39, 6.65; At 13.48);
(3) Limited Atonement (In sending His Son to be killed for the sins of men, God, in truth, had in mind to provide the only means by which His elect could be saved, which guarantees them eternal salvation, while Arminian atonement is universal and, nevertheless, does not guarantee the salvation of anyone in absolute terms; the best demonstration of this truth was made by John Owen in the book For Whom Did Christ Die?, PES, and I advise you to read the detailed discussion there, including the answers to the objections to this logical and clear teaching of Scripture; Mc 10.45; Tt 2.14; Hb 9.28; At 20.28; Ef 5.25; Jo 17.6, 9; Hb 9.12; Ap 5.9);
(4) Irresistible Grace (The elect, in time, will be called by God to come out of their spiritual graves, that is, in an irresistible manner, in the act of the application of redemption by the Holy Spirit (regeneration), since this eternal redemption was objectively obtained for them by God the Son. The apostle Paul says Rm 8.28-30: We know that all things work together for good to those who love God, to those who are called according to His purpose. 29 For whom He foreknew, He also predestined to be conformed to the image of His Son, that He might be the firstborn among many brethren. 30 Moreover whom He predestined, these He also called; whom He called, these He also justified; and whom He justified, these He also glorified. See also Jo 6.37, 39, 65; Tt 3.3-6; Ef 2.1-10);
(5) Perseverance of the Saints (The salvation of the elect is eternal, since the same grace of God that saved them will act effectively in their lives, so that they cannot fall totally and finally, for justification, regeneration and adoption are irreversible.
It is true the assertion of Scripture that "there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus" (Rm 8.1). See also Jo 10.28-30: "25 Jesus answered them, I told you, and you do not believe. The works that I do in the name of My Father, they bear witness of Me. 26 But you do not believe, because you are not of My sheep, as I said to you. 27 My sheep hear My voice, and I know them, and they follow Me. 28 And I give them eternal life, and they shall never perish; neither shall anyone snatch them out of My hand. 29 My Father, who has given them to Me, is greater than all; and no one is able to snatch them out of My Father's hand. 30 I and My Father are one."").
Well then, when analyzing what the reformers taught fundamentally, whose summary is the Five Points of Calvinism, and observing the total consistency of these teachings with Scripture, I could make no other choice and my theological pendulum swung irresistibly toward Calvinism.
According to Paulo Anglada, in Calvinism – The Ancient Doctrines of Grace, Editora Os Puritanos, SP, 1996, "The ancient doctrines of grace are a logical, coherent and harmonious system. The so-called points of Calvinism reveal how the eternal redemption of totally depraved sinners, as a consequence of original sin, by the Triune God is possible: the Father elects unconditionally, the Son redeems objectively the elect, and the Holy Spirit applies effectively the redemption to the heart of those for whom Christ died". Finally, Anglada says: "The Calvinist doctrine of the perseverance of the saints is the inevitable and biblical conclusion of the work of redemption. Man, in his natural state, is totally depraved – that is, his spiritual faculties have been completely corrupted, becoming an enemy of God, dead in his trespasses and sins.
God the Father, moved by His infinite love, chose, before the foundation of the world, some of these to manifest His mercy, electing them to be holy and blameless. When the fullness of time came, the Lord Jesus became flesh, fulfilled the law and died on the cross for God's elect, objectively expiating the guilt that had been imputed to them by the sin of Adam. In due time, it pleased God to call them effectively, sovereignly applying His special grace for salvation, independently of any merit on their part. What absurdity to imagine that, after all this, the redeemed could completely depart from the grace of God and lose salvation!"
Thus, as I am convinced that these two systems are the two poles in which we can situate ourselves theologically, so that one cannot be logically, coherently and biblically, both Arminian and Calvinist, or a "Calviminian" mixture that contains a percentage of one and the other system at the same time, it follows that I had to choose between one and the other. Either you are Arminian or you are Calvinist, and not a mixture of these two mutually exclusive systems. I chose, as I could not help but do, Calvinism, since it reflects the system taught by the apostles and by Jesus Himself. I am not ashamed to be in the company of the noblest saints in the history of the church, such as Augustine, Luther, Calvin, John Knox, John Bunyan, John Gill, John Owen, George Whitefield, Jonathan Edwards, Spurgeon and others. I am in good company, don't you think?
Now, when one speaks of Arminianism, the system of uncertainty, of doubt, of pessimism, of fear, of insecurity, only those who suffer from the same problems as its articulator can embrace it. Only those who have enough faith to submit to the sovereignty of God can be Calvinist and can accept what Scripture clearly teaches, only the elect convinced of their position can be Calvinists.
For centuries, the Arminians lived with their system without taking it to its logical extremes and, consequently, without actually revealing its true face. The five points we enumerated are only the tip of the iceberg of Arminianism. Do you want to know what was really hidden in the Arminian system and that today is openly being defended by Arminians who dared to take Arminianism to its logical extremes? One phrase only: Open theism! Do you know what this is? In the next article I explain. This will be the second reason because I am not Arminian. The tip of your iceberg already distanced me from it, and the body of the iceberg will certainly keep me definitively on the other pole, in the safe harbor of Calvinism, in excellent company. I conclude in part 2 of this article.
By Pr. Fabiano Antônio Ferreira, D.D. - Until the next and the peace of the Lord
(Study conducted at the College of Pastors in the Work of the Restoration of All Things (1) – April/2003)
In this second article, I set forth the second reason that definitively distanced me from Arminianism. The fact is that God, in all ages, "needed" men who nurtured a correct perspective of Him, of themselves, and of their fellow men. Moreover, this is the supreme goal of Christian life and the goal of true spirituality. Men who saw God through a correct theological perspective, viewing Him through the lens of Scripture: an infinite God, sovereign, omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent, who governs His created world with infinite wisdom and who has effective means planned beforehand to bring history to the end that He Himself planned, always acting according to the counsel of His holy will.
Men who saw themselves as the great Apostle Paul – and in this holy line we can place Luther, Calvin, Jonathan Edwards, Matthew Poole, John Owen, John Gill, C. H. Spurgeon, D. M. Lloyd-Jones, Gerstner, R. C. Sproul, etc., and who knows me and you, history will tell –, who considered himself the least among the saints, the chief of sinners, an example of those who would believe in God, a true reference for God's elect contemporary to him and his successors. Who also saw men through a correct spiritual perspective, through the lens of the doctrine concerning man revealed in Scripture.
For the Apostle Paul, men were saved or not. The saved were God's elect, predestined for adoption as sons through Jesus Christ, efficaciously called by the gospel, raised from their spiritual graves by the miraculous action of the triune God to take their seat in the heavenly places in Christ, marked to enter human history as sheep of the Father and the Son, redeemed by the expiatory, propitiatory and substitutive sacrifice of the Son on the cross of Calvary and regenerated by the Holy Spirit in His efficacious and irresistible calling, and sealed by the same Spirit for the day of redemption. His message was: God saves sinners!
The other men, according to his gospel, were elect or reprobate, which motivated him to preach the gospel intensely so as to be God's instrument for the discovery of the elect, whom God sovereignly was placing in his way, among whom we can mention the seller of purple Lydia and the jailer of Philippi.
Paul was grateful to God for being God's fellow laborer and co-worker in favor of the Lady Elect, the Church. He was humble, as he could not fail to be, for having been chosen by God to do a great service in His kingdom, which he was always conscious that he did not deserve. Joyfully he said: "But God chose me from the womb" and in another place, "He chose us before the foundation of the world".
Unlike this salutary vision of Scripture, illustrated with a maximum example, that of the Apostle Paul, there is the Arminian worldview.
Until recently, Arminianism, since its conception in opposition to Calvinism, lived with its internal logical inconsistencies, when it was definitively taken to its logical extremes, 2 through its proponents most entrenched in the Canadian and American evangelical scenario, led by Clark Pinnock 3 – and there are already Brazilian 4 representatives of Arminianism taken to its extremes in this Brazilian land! –, and it reached the point of seeing God with the inverse image of that which is described in Scripture, emptying all of His attributes and creating a "God" finite and impotent (or god? or an idol?), who does not even know what may happen in the future, given that there is a being in the universe called man, free, endowed with a "free will", unpredictable, with uncaused actions and who is a threat to the fulfillment of His predictions in Scripture, by not allowing God to foresee any of his future actions.
In the extremist Arminian vision, which is totally humanistic and unbiblical, assuming a posture almost liberal (in the academic and historical sense of the term), God is lowered almost to the position of fallen man himself, or perhaps a little below, and man rises to a stature almost of the God of the Bible. This vision, obviously, is nothing but the product of the imagination of fallen man in his project of apostate autonomism, inspired, as it could not fail to be, by God's arch-enemy, who was the first to desire this rebellious autonomy. Apostate autonomism could only lead to the deconstruction 5 of theology, as was already foreseen. In fact, Arminianism, which excessively emphasizes autonomism, is the most complete proof of the total depravity of the human being!
When extremist Arminianism is assumed as a worldview and provides the presuppositions for the analysis of Scripture, man comes to occupy the center of attention and God is relegated to a second or third place. The superpowers that men come to have are the evidence of this, for even the unregenerate men whom the Bible teaches to be dead in trespasses and sins come to no longer be seen thus, but are seen as capable of ascending to the heavens, if they wish, and even leaving there, if they enter. All of this is nothing more than that old heresy that became known in church history as Pelagianism 6 or its allomorph (another form), semi-Pelagianism.
According to the Arminian vision, not even God can stop such a powerful man, but must always be on standby to be able to overcome the problems that man creates in the universe, which may even frustrate His plans, and perforce He has to keep stitching together history to see if He manages to do what He foretold in Scripture long ago, and perhaps "thoughtlessly", by "not knowing" what man was capable of. In the vision of Scripture, all the problems that men have caused and will cause, under the insinuation of God's arch-enemy, are exhaustively known by God and have never caught Him or will catch Him by surprise, for He is omniscient and knows where history is going and has never lost or will lose control of everything that happens in the created world, as extremist Arminians suppose. Moreover, the biblical doctrine of divine providence teaches us that everything is decreed by the Almighty God, so that there is nothing that occurs without being the product of His eternal decree.
On the other hand, in the evangelical camp, this Arminian vision builds the superpastors, the true almighties who threaten to take the place of God, who determine, decree, call into being things that are not, bless, prophesy prosperity and so on. In short, they do things that in ancient times only the God of the Bible could do. Who suffers most in all this are the faithful and sincere sheep who are manipulated by leaders with this type of extremist Arminian orientation, who offer them instead of election and eternal and absolute security, a position of candidates for the kingdom of the heavens, threatening them for any reason, even the most frivolous and banal, of losing their salvation. Arminianism is a spiritual terrorism worse than that headed by Osama bin Laden! It is with deep sadness that I note and record this reality.
Upon reading the biography of Arminius and his complete works, I suspect his insanity. I also suspect the insanity of the "theological" system that his disciples created, a humanistic monstrosity resulting from apostate autonomism, which undermines the salutary vision of Scripture which, truly, from the moment it is humbly embraced, can produce truly powerful instruments in God's hands. The Arminian theological proposal prefigured embryonically the deconstruction of genuine biblical theology and, perforce, could not do otherwise. Although its defenders today say that they do not support deconstructionism, in practice, however, they are deconstructing all sound doctrine. God has already been deconstructed in His attributes and, to all appearances, the Trinity itself will not be able to escape the insane proposals of extremist Arminians.
On the other hand, to give you a breather, genuine biblical theology has already invaded the lives of many sinners in history and produced saints in the Church of the living God, to the point that one of these saints, Jonathan Edwards, was able to sound the alarm in his congregation, vividly showing the dangers that "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God" run. (With a mocking air, suddenly, the liberals would say that this was one of the "follies" of the pre-Enlightenment period!). As it seems to me, and I also believe that R. C. Sproul does, Arminian theology and its very close partner, liberalism, reflect nothing more nothing less than the scene of a "God (or god) in the Hands of Angry Sinners!".
May God keep us from the pernicious ideas of these angry sinners, who are immersing many sincere Christians in a true black hole and Christian faith in a quicksand lake. Strange things are emerging out there, such as libertarian theism, process theology, the theology of God's openness (which implies a logical and total emptying of God's omniscience, from which God comes to not know the future), the rapid emergence of a neo-gnosticism gospel and the latest novelty – I say latest because I am not omniscient like the extreme Arminians, thanks to God, and I do not know what they are preparing around this world – is that they are already working to empty hell 7.
That was all we needed. Could it be that deep down they are not just afraid of going there? Of course, by the extreme Arminian system, no one can have absolute certainty of salvation and that they will not end up there. So, they say now, let us build a “theological” tunnel to rescue those poor souls that our opponents suppose are there (very quietly: the Calvinists!) and let us begin the task of lowering its temperature, because it could be that we end up there, nobody knows the future, neither God nor us! For the liberals the task was easy, it was enough to deconstruct hell and done: problem solved!
Extreme Arminianism, dear reader, is, in reality, the “theology” of uncertainty, insecurity and despair: a black hole of quicksand. It strengthens man and weakens or almost extinguishes God. It is unbiblical from its foundations and inconsistent with Scripture. Let us leave its inhospitable region running, abhorring even the garment stained with its miasmatic blemishes and let us follow toward the verdant pastures of the sound doctrine of Scripture, where we hear the sweet and soft voice of the Good Shepherd, we find guarantee of eternal life, as well as absolute peace and security for being safe in the hands of Him from whom no one can snatch His sheep, because He is greater than all and than everything. In the hands of this true God, not in those of a deity deconstructed by angry sinners, you can truly be a blessing!
Reaffirming the ideals of the Reformation:
Sola Scriptura, Sola Gratia, Sola Fide, Solus Christus and Soli Deo Gloria!
* The author is a minister in the Work of the Restoration of All Things and pastors the Church in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA. He holds a bachelor's degree and a licentiate in mathematics, specialist in the original languages of the Bible (Hebrew, Aramaic and Greek), doctor in divinity from the Faculty of Philosophical and Theological Sciences of Rio de Janeiro, studied Hebrew at UFRJ, is pursuing a master's degree in Old Testament at the Andrew Jumper Presbyterian Graduate Center, in São Paulo and is a graduate student in Theology at Newburgh Theological Seminary, in Indiana, USA. He was organizer and main translator of the opus magnum of Bruce K. Waltke and M. O'Connor, Introduction to Biblical Hebrew Syntax, launched in 2006 by Editora Cultura Cristã. He taught Biblical Theology, Systematic Theology, Contemporary Theology, Hermeneutics, Exegesis, Original Languages of the Bible, Portuguese and English Language at the College of Pastors in the Work of the Restoration of All Things (SEMTIMOBRART), in Rio de Janeiro. He was the 2nd vice-president of the Evangelical Academy of Letters of Greater Rio.
1. The College of Pastors in the Work of the Restoration of All Things (SEMTIMOBRART) is headquartered at Rua Guaiuba, 231, Acari, Rio de Janeiro. Every last week of each month, evangelists and pastors meet for Advanced Biblical and Theological Studies and language classes, with the objective of keeping leaders in the Work of the Restoration of All Things well informed about the main theological trends in contemporary evangelicalism and for recycling and updating in the disciplines of Hermeneutics, Exegesis of the OT and NT, Biblical Theology, Systematic Theology, Contemporary Theology, Original Languages of the Bible, Linguistics, English and Portuguese Language. In 2009, there is the intention to implement distance learning (EAD) on a specific website with live and on-demand classes at the new headquarters at the “Sitio Atos 3.21” .
2. Note that not all Arminians take Arminianism to its extreme developments, staying with the milder, non-extreme form of it, not working through its internal inconsistencies. When Arminianism began to resolve its internal logical inconsistencies, it took on the extreme form defended by Clark Pinnock and his Arminian colleagues, in the book Grace of God and the Will of Man, which presents the true face of Arminianism.
3. If the reader wishes to inform himself more deeply about these matters that I will address in passing in this article, read the following books by Clark Pinnock (author or organizer), Grace of God and the Will of Man, The Openness of God, A Wideness in God's Mercy, Most Moved Mover. Before that, I advise you to vaccinate yourself with the following responses given to these extreme Arminian writings: R. K. Mc Gregor Wright, Banished Sovereignty: Redemption for a Postmodern Culture (Editora Cultura Cristã); Paulo Anglada, Calvinism: The Ancient Doctrines of Grace (Editora Puritanos); The Canons of Dort (Editora Cultura Cristã); Thomas R. Schreiner and Bruce A. Ware, Still Sovereign: Contemporary Perspectives on Election, Foreknowledge, and Grace; Bruce A. Ware, God's Lesser Glory: The Diminished God of Open Theism. All of these works can be purchased at the website www.amazon.com.
4. Listen to the 2 CDs by Ricardo Gondim on Predestination and the reader, after having read the works of Clark Pinnock cited in the previous note, will see that Gondim defends the viewpoints of “open theism” (open theism, or libertarian theism, or theology of God's openness), albeit in a veiled and disguised way, because he does not cite the sources on which he relies heavily. However, it is easy to perceive that Gondim's non-orthodox presuppositions in these CDs derive from libertarian theists, with whom he, as an Arminian, sympathizes, in addition to being a step forward in the traces of liberalism that he demonstrated in It Is Forbidden, What the Bible Allows and the Church Forbids. But the reader should follow the following advice: listen to Gondim's CDs seated and well supported, because in them Gondim achieves the feat of reversing history, qualifying as orthodox Pelagius, Arminius and Arminians in general, even those of libertarian theism, of which he is one of the representatives in Brazil, and condemning and qualifying as heretics Augustine, Calvin and all the Reformed who defend, as he says, predestinarianism. Are you astonished? Go check it out and then answer me: Is Gondim the alter-ego (”another self”) of Pinnock or Richard Rice in Brazil? Time will tell. I think that whoever has looked so favorably upon the theology of Charles Finney, as is the case with Gondim, can only use the Soli Deo Gloria of the Reformers at the end of his articles as a disguise. Beware, reader! In truth, today, in 2009, time has already revealed the whole truth to us. The assumed Relational Theology of Ricardo Gondim, which led to his expulsion from the Assemblies of God, shows us the logically predictive character of this article when originally written in 2003. It was predictable that Gondim's non-orthodox positions, in a clear reflection of those assumed by his intellectual mentors, Pinnock and Rice, would come to cause discomfort and would lead to a lucid analysis and a confrontation with century-old Protestant orthodoxy, in fact, with Scripture itself, and would be justifiably condemned.
5. According to Ricardo Quadros Gouvêa in Fides Reformata 2/1, p. 64: “Deconstruction is a reading practice based on a hermeneutics of suspicion in which the text is understood from its theoretical self-disintegration. Deconstruction implies the subversion, the decentralization of any perceptible origin of authoritative discourses associated with 'metanarratives', that is, theoretical macrostructures such as, for example, philosophical and theological systems”.
6. Pelagianism – the essence of Pelagius's teaching was his erroneous idea that the will, even in the fallen state of men, was essentially free from the corruption of sin and possessed the capacity in itself to choose and perform good works, according to R. K. Mc Gregor Wright, Banished Sovereignty, p.23. Also, according to the definition by this same author on p. 256, “semi-Pelagianism was a theology of accommodation that arose in the 5th century, which taught that the grace of God was not necessary for the free will to begin to act in a correct way.”
7. PINNOCK, Clark H., A Wideness in God's Mercy
Rev. Fabiano Antônio Ferreira, D.D.