I was raised non-Calvinistic Southern Baptist. My introduction to Calvinism came through John MacArthur's Study Bible and Commentaries. I then read R.C. Sproul's Chosen by God and found the Reformed interpretation convincing. I only remained Reformedish for a little over a year before returning to my non-Calvinistic and Dispensational default positions. I decided to go to college at The College at Southeastern (now Judson College) in 2006, a liberal arts college of Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary in Wake Forest, North Carolina. My first semester there I saw The Works of Arminius, Jacob Arminius (1559-1609), in the library and began reading. To my surprise, Arminius was not the semi-Pelagian boogeyman against whom I was warned by certain Reformed writers. His beliefs on Total Depravity alone demonstrate as much.
ARMINIUS
I studied and blogged on the theology and life of Jacob Arminius and his colleagues the Remonstrants from 2006 until 2011. I stopped writing and blogging in 2012, due to poor choices I had made early in 2012 that interrupted my entire life, and didn't even think about returning to writing until late 2018. By December of 2019 I was ready to return to blogging on Arminius and the Remonstrants in January of 2020. On January 1, 2020, my cousin and friend's only son was killed in a motorcycle accident and I did not pursue blogging. I took some time to grieve with them, to think about life and about God's relationship with our choices and their results, and I put blogging aside for the foreseeable future. That young man's death rattled our family and the whole community. God was still good. God was still faithful. God was still worthy of our worship. But something about the boy's death and God's relationship with us, and with the choices we make, bothered me immensely.
PELAGIUS
I won't hide from the fact that I allowed my shock and horror at the death of that young man influence me theologically. I began to question God's relationship with our freely willed choices--particularly whether God foreordains, in the strictest sense, what we choose to do. I began reading several works of Pelagius (354-420). By the time I had read his "Letter to Demetrias," I was intrigued, and wanted more. I admit there were passages with which I was uncomfortable, and even disagreed with him to some degree, but I wanted to read more. From February of 2020 to March of 2022, I had read at least sixty percent of all that he had written (in letters and Bible commentaries). For nearly one solid year I defended Pelagius' theology even while disagreeing with what I forced myself to imagine were merely minor points of doctrine. I was eager, I eventually sought after, and I so much wanted to be a disciple of Pelagius because, at least for me, he represented the polar opposite of Augustinian / Reformed theology. I could not tolerate any theology that insisted on God foreordaining and bringing to pass all of the horrors that we experience in our lives merely by some cold and calculated decree (at least that was how I perceived the doctrine of foreordination).
Pelagius eventually exasperated me completely. There was no way I could possibly live up to his demands of living sinlessly. That may seem an odd statement to some believers because they will highlight Jesus' statement, "Therefore you shall be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect" (Matt. 5:48 NASB); and Peter's statement, "As obedient children, do not be conformed to the former lusts which were yours in your ignorance, but like the Holy One who called you, be holy yourselves also in all your behavior; because it is written: 'You shall be holy, for I am holy'" (1 Pet. 1:13-16 NASB); and John's statements, "My little children, I am writing these things to you so that you may not sin" (1 John 2:1); and "If you know that He is righteous, you know that everyone who practices righteousness also has been born of Him" (1 John 2:29); and "everyone who has this hope set on Him purifies himself, just as He is pure" (1 John 3:3). At face value one might imagine that, in order to enter Heaven and thusly be saved from one's sins, Hell, and the wrath of God, one must first gradually become holy, righteous, perfect.
The regenerate believer does want to live holy, without sin, and I cherish these and other such passages. But Pelagius adds: "He," that is, God, "will quickly write your deed of divorce if He sees even one act of adultery on your part."1 He adds error to error: "The heavenly palace will admit none but the holy and the righteous, the simple and the innocent; evil has no place in God's presence [which is a true statement but needs further explanation], and he who desires to reign with Christ must be free from all forms of wickedness and deceit."2 The irony is a bit rich here since Pelagius admits elsewhere that even he himself is not "free from all infection of sin."3 He then cements his heresy, insisting,
PELAGIUS' WHIP
Pelagius violently drove me, as with some sharp whip in his hand against me, to the Reformed faith--and Arminius lent him a helping hand! First, Pelagius is not finished with creating a stupefying degree of anxiety within me, when he burdens us all and boldly insists that "God does not love the wicked, He does not love sinners, He does not love the unrighteous, the greedy, the cruel, the impious; but the good, the righteous, the pious, the humble, the guiltless, the gentle He does love."5 (Then God only loves Christ!) He irritates me immensely by providing shades of truth darkened by grave error. There is a sense in which God truly hates the wicked (Ps. 5:4, 5, 6; 7:11; 11:5, 6, 7)--His holiness demands it. But Pelagius will have me believe that, if I want God's favor, His love and His salvation in Heaven in the afterlife, then I must first become good, righteous, pious, humble, guiltless and gentle. That, however, is an utter impossibility (Rom. 3:10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18).
Pelagius and his ilk need to be reminded that, "while we were still helpless [in our sins and in our depravity], at the right time Christ died for the ungodly" (Rom. 5:6 NASB); and, "while we were enemies we were reconciled to God through the death of His Son" (Rom. 5:10 NASB). We were all living in the lusts of our flesh, indulging the desires of the flesh and of the mind, being by nature children of wrath (Eph. 2:1, 2, 3). For God so loved the unrighteous, greedy, cruel and impious world that He gave His one and only Son to save them (John 3:16, 17). But salvation, for Pelagius, is not exactly God's work alone. "I do not know whose servant he is who is seen to be doing neither evil nor good; or how he can hope for everlasting life from God if he has not earned it by good deeds."6 This is damnable heresy. A person will not be saved by earning it with good deeds (Rom. 3:21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 28; 11:6; Gal. 2:16; Eph. 2:8, 9; Titus 3:5). Believers are created in Christ Jesus for good works (Eph. 2:10), and works flow from salvation (James 2:24), but works can never merit salvation. Pelagius' theology is damnably heretical.
Secondly, Pelagius anachronistically denies the Reformed doctrine of sola fide, that we are saved by faith alone through grace alone in Christ alone to the glory of God alone as stated in our only divine source: Scripture alone: "The evangelist bears witness that a certain man [a rich young ruler] came to the Savior and asked what he should do to attain eternal life and that the Lord answered him thus: 'If you would have [eternal] life [with God in Heaven], keep the commandments' (Matt. 19:17). He did not say, 'Keep faith alone.' For if faith alone is required, it is superfluous to order the commandments to be kept."7 No, it is not superfluous to order the keeping of the commandments or of good works, but is entirely in keeping with the work of God, in Christ Jesus and by the effectual means of the Holy Spirit, that such keeping of commands and doing good works will flow from God's sole work of grace (John 14:15, 21, 23). Paul writes: "So then, my beloved, just as you have always obeyed, not as in my presence only, but now much more in my absence, work out your own salvation with fear and trembling; for it is God who is at work in you, both to desire [or to the willing] and to work for [to act in order to fulfill] His good pleasure" (Phil. 2:12-13).
We do not, however, will and work in order to attain His good pleasure or any other spiritual benefit. We will and work from His inner work within us for His own good pleasure. But not in Pelagius' theology. "But scripture testifies that eternal life cannot be merited save by complete observance of the divine commandments ... Therefore no one has that life [eternal] unless he has kept all the commandments of the Law; and the man who does not have that life cannot be a possessor of the Heavenly Kingdom in which it is the living, not the dead, who shall reign."8 Scripture insists otherwise (Gal. 2:16; Titus 3:5). He reiterates this mantra over and over again: "For just as observance of the commandments bestows [eternal] life, so, on the other hand, transgression of them produces death, and the man who has been doomed to die because of his disobedience cannot hope for the crown awarded."9 Pay close attention to Pelagius' definition of righteousness here: "Righteousness, then, is, quite simply, not to sin--and not to sin is to keep the commandments of the Law. Keeping these commandments is ensured in two ways, by doing nothing which is forbidden, and by striving to fulfill everything which is commanded."10 If you can keep God's commandments, according to Pelagius, then you can merit Heaven. As a matter of fact, this is the only way for one to enter Heaven, by one's own merit.
But here is the rub: In a sense Pelagius is right. He rightly interprets Jesus' words to the effect that, if a person can perfectly keep God's Law, he can be saved--he can merit his own salvation. The problem, however, is that no one is capable (Rom. 7:23; 8:6, 7; James 3:2) of perfectly keeping and fulfilling God's Law except Jesus Christ (John 8:46; 2 Cor. 5:21; cf. Rom. 3:20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 28; Gal. 3:11): "I do not nullify the grace of God, for if righteousness [not applied righteousness but merited righteousness by one's own efforts] comes through [sufficiently obeying] the Law, then Christ died needlessly" (Gal. 2:21 NASB). Jesus did not die merely for those who were unable to perfectly keep the Law--just in case some fell short of perfectly keeping God's Law--but because we all, without exception, fall short of keeping God's Law (Rom. 3:23); and this is why the righteousness of Jesus Christ must be applied to us (Rom. 3:21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26). For, if you stumble at even one command even once in your lifetime, you cannot be saved (James 2:10): "For all who rely on the works of the Law are under a curse, as it is written, 'Cursed [eternally damned / condemned] is everyone who does not continue to do everything written in the Book of the Law'" (Gal. 3:10 NIV).
ARMINIUS' HELPING HAND
Someone may ask why I did not merely return to Arminius after rejecting Pelagius. For me, the issue bearing the most weight was the condition of the human heart / mind within a fallen context, particularly what needs to happen in order for someone to trust in Jesus for salvation. Pelagius believes that a person can freely trust in the Gospel of Jesus by the grace of God--and by "grace" he means 1) the capacity to freely choose for oneself, as a capacity unaffected by sin or depravity, as given by God to human beings via creation; 2) the Law of Moses; 3) being forgiven of past sins by the atoning work of Christ; 4) in following the example of Jesus; and 5) the teachings of Jesus. These are the sole five aspects corresponding to his understanding of grace and nothing more. Dr. Robert F. Evans comments: "Pelagius has no doctrine of grace other than this. It would be unfaithful to the man himself to attempt to save his 'orthodoxy' by reading in some doctrine of infused grace which is not there."11 There is nothing that the Holy Spirit needs to enable because we are capable to believe in and of ourselves. Incidentally, Provisionists agree with Pelagius on this issue, while conceding that the Gospel contains the Power of God (Rom. 1:16, 17) sufficient for one to believe in Christ and be saved (Rom. 10:14, 15, 16, 17) by grace (meaning not by works, not by merit, not by trying to keep the Law).
Arminius disagrees. He answers his critic, Francis Gomarus, thusly: "Meanwhile I profess that I detest from my soul the Pelagian dogmas which are attributed [to me] ... by the Synods ...; and that, if anyone can prove from what I say that anything follows which has any affinity with those doctrines, I will change and correct my opinion."12 Arminius argues: "Free Will is unable to begin or to perfect any true and spiritual good without Grace. That I may not be said, like Pelagius, to practice delusion with regard to the word 'Grace,' I mean by it that which is the Grace of Christ and which belongs to regeneration."13 Most Arminian and Wesleyan scholars agree that Arminius' use of the word "regeneration" here refers to the act of Prevenient Grace--an enabling inner work of the Holy Spirit upon the Will of the creature so that he or she may freely choose to believe in Jesus. Such grace, such inner work, for Arminius is "simply and absolutely necessary for the illumination of the mind, the due ordering of the affections, and the inclination of the Will to that which is good."14 More on this below.
Why, for Arminius, is this inner work necessary? Because, in our fallen state, the "Free Will of man towards the True Good [such as is Saving Faith in Christ] is not only wounded, maimed, infirm, bent and weakened; but it is also imprisoned, destroyed, and lost: And its powers are not only debilitated and useless unless they be assisted by grace but it has no power whatever except such as are excited by Divine Grace."15 Arminius insists that the mind of all fallen mortals is "dark, destitute of the saving knowledge of God, and, according to the Apostle, incapable of those things which belong to the Spirit of God." But, not only is the mind of the mortal in this state, so, too, are the Affections of the Heart: "according to which it hates and has an aversion to that which is truly good and pleasing to God; but it loves and pursues what is evil." As a result, fallen mortals are left incapacitated, feeling in the Will the "utter Weakness of all the Powers to perform that which is truly good [i.e., believing in Christ]."16 He rightly concludes that "our Will is not free from the first fall; that is, it is not free to [the performance of] good, unless it be made free by the Son through His Spirit" (John 8:36; 16:8-11). This all seems quite Reformed. What could possibly be the problem?
I wondered why, as well as how, when the Holy Spirit performs all this inner work, and all this inner enabling in everyone who hears the Gospel, each person does not believe in Jesus as a result. Arminius' exposition on Grace and Free Will, as noted above, insists that the inner enabling work of the Holy Spirit is "absolutely necessary for the illumination of the mind, the due ordering of the affections, and the inclination of the Will to that which is good." So the Holy Spirit illumines one's mind of the Gospel, He orders rightly one's affections to desire salvation and He even inclines one's Will to believe in Christ, and yet not all who are thusly "graced" believe in Christ? How is that even possible? How does that even follow? How can anyone not conclude that all this power of the Holy Spirit seems rather inept and powerless? He continues:
WHY I BECAME REFORMED
Having agreed with Arminius on the fallen state of everyone born into the world (and, obviously, having rejected Pelagius and his theology as damnable heresy), I had no other option than to embrace the Reformed faith, as this biblical theology grants the only viable option for a proper interpretation of the effectual working of Grace. Is this effectual grace given to everyone? No. Why not? Because God was willing / desiring to demonstrate or show His wrath (Ps. 5:4, 5, 6; 7:11; 11:5, 6; Rom. 1:18; Eph. 5:6; Col. 3:6; 1 Thess. 1:10; 5:9; Rev. 6:16; 14:10) and to make His power known to the objects of wrath (Rom. 9:22) who resist Him (John 1:11; 3:18, 19), hate Him (Rom. 5:10), and reject Him (John 3:36) every moment of their existence (Acts 17:26, 27, 28)--an existence that He graciously and lovingly sustains by His own mercy. In this sense, then, we clearly see even His grace, His mercy, love, patience and power in sustaining the very existence of His enemies who hate Him. He, of all sentient beings, knows how to do good to those who utterly hate Him and defy Him in sin every moment He sustains their being.
I agree with Arminius that all fallen mortals are entirely incapable of believing in Jesus Christ without the inner working of the Holy Spirit (Phil. 1:29). But, where he alludes to an effectual work, I explicitly insist that the work of the Holy Spirit must be effectual in drawing to Christ the elect of God (Eph. 1:4, 5, 11; John 6:35, 37, 44, 45, 63, 65). "The person without the Spirit does not accept the things that come from the Spirit of God but considers them foolishness, and cannot understand them because they are discerned only through the Spirit" (1 Cor. 2:14 NIV). To "those whom God has called," Christ Jesus is for us "the power of God and the wisdom of God" (1 Cor. 1:24). "It is because of Him that you are in Christ Jesus, who has become for us wisdom from God--that is, our righteousness, holiness and redemption. Therefore, as it is written, 'Let the one who boasts boast in the Lord'" (1 Cor. 1:30-31). "He chose to give us birth through the Word of Truth, that we might be a kind of firstfruits of all He created" (James 1:18). If God chose to give birth to every single person then every single person would believe in Christ. "But when the kindness and love of God our Savior appeared, He saved us, not because of righteous things we had done, but because of His mercy. He saved us through the washing of rebirth and renewal by the Holy Spirit, whom He poured out on us generously through Jesus Christ our Savior, so that, having been justified by His grace, we might become heirs having the hope of eternal life" (Titus 3:4-7).
I also became Reformed once I understood that God cannot learn any information. The early Church fathers write much about God's simple foreknowledge and they suggest that He merely foreknows what would happen among creatures who order their own lives and their own choices in and of themselves. I think they were mistaken. Arminius himself notes that God's knowledge derives from His own divine being.18 So, when Arminius appeals to God's foreknowledge of future events (which, for him, also includes the concept of Middle Knowledge), he means that God derives that knowledge not from without but from within Himself. I agree--and Arminius helped me to broaden my own views on the subject. So I believe that, if God has predetermined that a particular individual will exist in future-history, then He fore-knows all that is to be known about this person whom God has for all eternity conceived in His mind and in His eternal plan, yet that knowledge does not derive from the individual or from their so-called free choices, but from within the eternal mind and by the eternal plan of God.
If we perceive of all future acts as a blank canvas from eternity past, humanly speaking, then God and God alone prescripts that future-history. He does not somehow peer into the future, foreseeing what will happen, because there is nothing to happen without Him, apart from Him, and apart from His eternal plan. Arminius often relays the notion that "God does nothing in time which He has not decreed to do from all eternity."19 I agree even if I diverge from him on particular notions of the manner in which God decrees His world and the manner in which He executes His eternal covenant and plan (cf. Heb. 13:20). Again, though, there is nothing for God to know about the future in some nebulous bewilderment--as though God looked into His crystal ball to see what might happen if He were to do this or that; or if someone were to freely chose to do this or that. God cannot learn any information from outside His eternal Self. He knows the end from the beginning (Isa. 46:10) because He has, at least in some sense (as R.C. Sproul said), foreordained all that shall happen from beginning to end.
Does He force or coerce anyone toward sin and evil? No (James 1:13, 14). He doesn't have to, either, because we are already fallen, we want to sin, and we are eager to sin. So are the demons and devils and other forces of evil (cf. Eph. 6:12, 13). But God has the sovereign right to use wickedness and sin and evil toward His own ends (cf. Rev. 17:17). He can even prevent someone from sinning against Him and against His ultimate sovereign will (cf. Gen. 20:6). Do we do what we do because God foreordained that we do what we do? In some sense we must answer Yes. But we must also understand that we do, at times, what we want to do--especially regarding sin. God is still just in allowing / permitting / foreordaining that we sin when we want to sin because we want to sin and He must concur with our sin if He permits us to sin. God hates sin (cf. Prov. 6:16, 17, 18, 19; 8:13; Isa. 59:2; Rom. 6:23). That should be a given. So, if we sin, we sin because we wanted to sin and because God permitted us to sin. God's foreordination of our sin is not a primary cause or effect of our sin. God does not have to bring about our sin. We are quite capable of bringing about all manner of sin and evil. In short, He is sovereign, we are fallen. He is Creator. We are the creature. He is God, we are His subjects, and if God had mercy on only one among us sinners then that would have been mercy enough.
CONCLUSION
I actually still like Jacob Arminius, and Remonstrants like Hugo Grotius and Johan van Oldenbarnevelt (not so much Simon Episcopius, who rejects the inheritance of a sin nature from Adam, and the reality of a resultant Radical Depravity); and I still love my Classical Arminian and Wesleyan brothers and sisters immensely. We're family. I count them as my dear brothers and sisters in Christ. I pray God's blessings upon each one of them and their families. I also won't spend a lot of time debating or arguing about these issues. We agree on so much!
I disagree more with Provisionists, like Dr. Leighton Flowers &c. (whom I still love in Christ), and I think their errors are more serious; they agree more with Pelagius about an issue such as Free Will, but they certainly have the great majority of the second- and third-century Church fathers for historical support (though I do not think they have biblical support). Thankfully, however, Provisionists do reject Pelagius' ground for salvation in the keeping of the Law, merit and good works, insisting instead in the grace of God (meaning not by merit nor by works) through faith in Jesus by the proclaimed power of the Gospel. For this we should all rejoice. These are a few of my theological arguments on the issues and I know many of my brothers and sisters will not agree--and, honestly, I'm at peace with that. We each have our convictions, our consciences, and we have to walk our own path with Christ--and we can walk together in Him as long as our focus is on Him and not on us, our imagined efforts or supposed human strength, or inner goodness. There is One who is Good: God in Trinity, Father, Son and Holy Spirit.
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1 Pelagius, "On Virginity," in B.R. Rees, Pelagius: Life and Letters (Woodbridge: The Boydell Press, 1998), 2.82.
2 Ibid., 2.84.
3 "On the Christian Life," 2.107.
4 "On the Divine Law," 2.94.
5 "On the Christian Life," 2.111.
6 Ibid., 2.117.
7 Ibid., 2.122.
8 "On Virginity," 2.74.
9 Ibid.
10 Ibid., 2.75.
11 Robert F. Evans, Pelagius: Inquiries and Reappraisals (Eugene: Wipf & Stock Publishers, 2010), 111.
12 Jacob Arminius, "Examination of Gomarus," in The Works of Arminius, the London Edition, Three Volumes, trans. and eds. James and William Nichols (Grand Rapids: Baker Book House, 1996), 3.657.
13 Arminius, "IV. Grace and Free Will," Works, 2.700.
14 Ibid.
15 Ibid., 2.192.
16 Ibid., 2.192-93.
17 Ibid. 2.700.
18 Ibid., 2.341.
19 Ibid., 2.227, 350, 368.
ARMINIUS
I studied and blogged on the theology and life of Jacob Arminius and his colleagues the Remonstrants from 2006 until 2011. I stopped writing and blogging in 2012, due to poor choices I had made early in 2012 that interrupted my entire life, and didn't even think about returning to writing until late 2018. By December of 2019 I was ready to return to blogging on Arminius and the Remonstrants in January of 2020. On January 1, 2020, my cousin and friend's only son was killed in a motorcycle accident and I did not pursue blogging. I took some time to grieve with them, to think about life and about God's relationship with our choices and their results, and I put blogging aside for the foreseeable future. That young man's death rattled our family and the whole community. God was still good. God was still faithful. God was still worthy of our worship. But something about the boy's death and God's relationship with us, and with the choices we make, bothered me immensely.
PELAGIUS
I won't hide from the fact that I allowed my shock and horror at the death of that young man influence me theologically. I began to question God's relationship with our freely willed choices--particularly whether God foreordains, in the strictest sense, what we choose to do. I began reading several works of Pelagius (354-420). By the time I had read his "Letter to Demetrias," I was intrigued, and wanted more. I admit there were passages with which I was uncomfortable, and even disagreed with him to some degree, but I wanted to read more. From February of 2020 to March of 2022, I had read at least sixty percent of all that he had written (in letters and Bible commentaries). For nearly one solid year I defended Pelagius' theology even while disagreeing with what I forced myself to imagine were merely minor points of doctrine. I was eager, I eventually sought after, and I so much wanted to be a disciple of Pelagius because, at least for me, he represented the polar opposite of Augustinian / Reformed theology. I could not tolerate any theology that insisted on God foreordaining and bringing to pass all of the horrors that we experience in our lives merely by some cold and calculated decree (at least that was how I perceived the doctrine of foreordination).
Pelagius eventually exasperated me completely. There was no way I could possibly live up to his demands of living sinlessly. That may seem an odd statement to some believers because they will highlight Jesus' statement, "Therefore you shall be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect" (Matt. 5:48 NASB); and Peter's statement, "As obedient children, do not be conformed to the former lusts which were yours in your ignorance, but like the Holy One who called you, be holy yourselves also in all your behavior; because it is written: 'You shall be holy, for I am holy'" (1 Pet. 1:13-16 NASB); and John's statements, "My little children, I am writing these things to you so that you may not sin" (1 John 2:1); and "If you know that He is righteous, you know that everyone who practices righteousness also has been born of Him" (1 John 2:29); and "everyone who has this hope set on Him purifies himself, just as He is pure" (1 John 3:3). At face value one might imagine that, in order to enter Heaven and thusly be saved from one's sins, Hell, and the wrath of God, one must first gradually become holy, righteous, perfect.
The regenerate believer does want to live holy, without sin, and I cherish these and other such passages. But Pelagius adds: "He," that is, God, "will quickly write your deed of divorce if He sees even one act of adultery on your part."1 He adds error to error: "The heavenly palace will admit none but the holy and the righteous, the simple and the innocent; evil has no place in God's presence [which is a true statement but needs further explanation], and he who desires to reign with Christ must be free from all forms of wickedness and deceit."2 The irony is a bit rich here since Pelagius admits elsewhere that even he himself is not "free from all infection of sin."3 He then cements his heresy, insisting,
Those who have been redeemed by Christ's passion through His dutifulness to His Father have been redeemed to this end, that, by keeping the laws of their Redeemer, they may prepare themselves for the life laid up for them in Heaven; and there they may in no way be said to arrive redeemed unless they follow the commands laid upon those who seek to obey, as it is written, "If you would enter Life, keep the commandments" (Matt. 19:17); that is, draw away from every illicit act which you are forbidden to do and readily approach every good deed which you are ordered to perform, so that, by persevering in your old, wicked desires, you may not ruin the faith with which you believed by a continuing love for some old sin, and the knowledge of God, revealed to you by a new grace, may not be profaned by sins ... Sacrifices and prayers will be rejected as offerings unless the mind of the one who makes the offering is pure and holy.4Pelagius and the Medieval ascetics believed that Jesus' atoning death cleansed the believer from all old sins; but sins committed after baptism can endanger the believer from attaining Heaven; hence the need for the theory of penance (that by "doing penance," with appropriate contrition and confession, one may free himself from further punishment in Purgatory). The problem with Pelagius' interpretation of Jesus' words at Matthew 19:17 should be obvious. When Christ replied to the man's question regarding how to enter Heaven, informing the man of God's Law, the man should have replied: "But, Rabbi, no man can keep the Law with utter perfection." But that is not how he replied. He claimed he had kept the Law from his youth. Then Jesus responds: "If you want to be [perfect], go and sell your possessions and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in Heaven; and, come, follow Me" (Matt. 19:21 NASB). "But when the young man heard this statement, he went away grieving; for he was one who owned much property" (Matt. 19:22). So the man had not, in fact, kept God's Law perfectly from his youth or he would be willing to do what Jesus had told him to do; for the two greatest commandments of all the Law are to "Love the LORD your GOD with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind ... and to love your neighbor as yourself" (Matt. 22:37, 38, 39).
PELAGIUS' WHIP
Pelagius violently drove me, as with some sharp whip in his hand against me, to the Reformed faith--and Arminius lent him a helping hand! First, Pelagius is not finished with creating a stupefying degree of anxiety within me, when he burdens us all and boldly insists that "God does not love the wicked, He does not love sinners, He does not love the unrighteous, the greedy, the cruel, the impious; but the good, the righteous, the pious, the humble, the guiltless, the gentle He does love."5 (Then God only loves Christ!) He irritates me immensely by providing shades of truth darkened by grave error. There is a sense in which God truly hates the wicked (Ps. 5:4, 5, 6; 7:11; 11:5, 6, 7)--His holiness demands it. But Pelagius will have me believe that, if I want God's favor, His love and His salvation in Heaven in the afterlife, then I must first become good, righteous, pious, humble, guiltless and gentle. That, however, is an utter impossibility (Rom. 3:10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18).
Pelagius and his ilk need to be reminded that, "while we were still helpless [in our sins and in our depravity], at the right time Christ died for the ungodly" (Rom. 5:6 NASB); and, "while we were enemies we were reconciled to God through the death of His Son" (Rom. 5:10 NASB). We were all living in the lusts of our flesh, indulging the desires of the flesh and of the mind, being by nature children of wrath (Eph. 2:1, 2, 3). For God so loved the unrighteous, greedy, cruel and impious world that He gave His one and only Son to save them (John 3:16, 17). But salvation, for Pelagius, is not exactly God's work alone. "I do not know whose servant he is who is seen to be doing neither evil nor good; or how he can hope for everlasting life from God if he has not earned it by good deeds."6 This is damnable heresy. A person will not be saved by earning it with good deeds (Rom. 3:21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 28; 11:6; Gal. 2:16; Eph. 2:8, 9; Titus 3:5). Believers are created in Christ Jesus for good works (Eph. 2:10), and works flow from salvation (James 2:24), but works can never merit salvation. Pelagius' theology is damnably heretical.
Secondly, Pelagius anachronistically denies the Reformed doctrine of sola fide, that we are saved by faith alone through grace alone in Christ alone to the glory of God alone as stated in our only divine source: Scripture alone: "The evangelist bears witness that a certain man [a rich young ruler] came to the Savior and asked what he should do to attain eternal life and that the Lord answered him thus: 'If you would have [eternal] life [with God in Heaven], keep the commandments' (Matt. 19:17). He did not say, 'Keep faith alone.' For if faith alone is required, it is superfluous to order the commandments to be kept."7 No, it is not superfluous to order the keeping of the commandments or of good works, but is entirely in keeping with the work of God, in Christ Jesus and by the effectual means of the Holy Spirit, that such keeping of commands and doing good works will flow from God's sole work of grace (John 14:15, 21, 23). Paul writes: "So then, my beloved, just as you have always obeyed, not as in my presence only, but now much more in my absence, work out your own salvation with fear and trembling; for it is God who is at work in you, both to desire [or to the willing] and to work for [to act in order to fulfill] His good pleasure" (Phil. 2:12-13).
We do not, however, will and work in order to attain His good pleasure or any other spiritual benefit. We will and work from His inner work within us for His own good pleasure. But not in Pelagius' theology. "But scripture testifies that eternal life cannot be merited save by complete observance of the divine commandments ... Therefore no one has that life [eternal] unless he has kept all the commandments of the Law; and the man who does not have that life cannot be a possessor of the Heavenly Kingdom in which it is the living, not the dead, who shall reign."8 Scripture insists otherwise (Gal. 2:16; Titus 3:5). He reiterates this mantra over and over again: "For just as observance of the commandments bestows [eternal] life, so, on the other hand, transgression of them produces death, and the man who has been doomed to die because of his disobedience cannot hope for the crown awarded."9 Pay close attention to Pelagius' definition of righteousness here: "Righteousness, then, is, quite simply, not to sin--and not to sin is to keep the commandments of the Law. Keeping these commandments is ensured in two ways, by doing nothing which is forbidden, and by striving to fulfill everything which is commanded."10 If you can keep God's commandments, according to Pelagius, then you can merit Heaven. As a matter of fact, this is the only way for one to enter Heaven, by one's own merit.
But here is the rub: In a sense Pelagius is right. He rightly interprets Jesus' words to the effect that, if a person can perfectly keep God's Law, he can be saved--he can merit his own salvation. The problem, however, is that no one is capable (Rom. 7:23; 8:6, 7; James 3:2) of perfectly keeping and fulfilling God's Law except Jesus Christ (John 8:46; 2 Cor. 5:21; cf. Rom. 3:20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 28; Gal. 3:11): "I do not nullify the grace of God, for if righteousness [not applied righteousness but merited righteousness by one's own efforts] comes through [sufficiently obeying] the Law, then Christ died needlessly" (Gal. 2:21 NASB). Jesus did not die merely for those who were unable to perfectly keep the Law--just in case some fell short of perfectly keeping God's Law--but because we all, without exception, fall short of keeping God's Law (Rom. 3:23); and this is why the righteousness of Jesus Christ must be applied to us (Rom. 3:21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26). For, if you stumble at even one command even once in your lifetime, you cannot be saved (James 2:10): "For all who rely on the works of the Law are under a curse, as it is written, 'Cursed [eternally damned / condemned] is everyone who does not continue to do everything written in the Book of the Law'" (Gal. 3:10 NIV).
ARMINIUS' HELPING HAND
Someone may ask why I did not merely return to Arminius after rejecting Pelagius. For me, the issue bearing the most weight was the condition of the human heart / mind within a fallen context, particularly what needs to happen in order for someone to trust in Jesus for salvation. Pelagius believes that a person can freely trust in the Gospel of Jesus by the grace of God--and by "grace" he means 1) the capacity to freely choose for oneself, as a capacity unaffected by sin or depravity, as given by God to human beings via creation; 2) the Law of Moses; 3) being forgiven of past sins by the atoning work of Christ; 4) in following the example of Jesus; and 5) the teachings of Jesus. These are the sole five aspects corresponding to his understanding of grace and nothing more. Dr. Robert F. Evans comments: "Pelagius has no doctrine of grace other than this. It would be unfaithful to the man himself to attempt to save his 'orthodoxy' by reading in some doctrine of infused grace which is not there."11 There is nothing that the Holy Spirit needs to enable because we are capable to believe in and of ourselves. Incidentally, Provisionists agree with Pelagius on this issue, while conceding that the Gospel contains the Power of God (Rom. 1:16, 17) sufficient for one to believe in Christ and be saved (Rom. 10:14, 15, 16, 17) by grace (meaning not by works, not by merit, not by trying to keep the Law).
Arminius disagrees. He answers his critic, Francis Gomarus, thusly: "Meanwhile I profess that I detest from my soul the Pelagian dogmas which are attributed [to me] ... by the Synods ...; and that, if anyone can prove from what I say that anything follows which has any affinity with those doctrines, I will change and correct my opinion."12 Arminius argues: "Free Will is unable to begin or to perfect any true and spiritual good without Grace. That I may not be said, like Pelagius, to practice delusion with regard to the word 'Grace,' I mean by it that which is the Grace of Christ and which belongs to regeneration."13 Most Arminian and Wesleyan scholars agree that Arminius' use of the word "regeneration" here refers to the act of Prevenient Grace--an enabling inner work of the Holy Spirit upon the Will of the creature so that he or she may freely choose to believe in Jesus. Such grace, such inner work, for Arminius is "simply and absolutely necessary for the illumination of the mind, the due ordering of the affections, and the inclination of the Will to that which is good."14 More on this below.
Why, for Arminius, is this inner work necessary? Because, in our fallen state, the "Free Will of man towards the True Good [such as is Saving Faith in Christ] is not only wounded, maimed, infirm, bent and weakened; but it is also imprisoned, destroyed, and lost: And its powers are not only debilitated and useless unless they be assisted by grace but it has no power whatever except such as are excited by Divine Grace."15 Arminius insists that the mind of all fallen mortals is "dark, destitute of the saving knowledge of God, and, according to the Apostle, incapable of those things which belong to the Spirit of God." But, not only is the mind of the mortal in this state, so, too, are the Affections of the Heart: "according to which it hates and has an aversion to that which is truly good and pleasing to God; but it loves and pursues what is evil." As a result, fallen mortals are left incapacitated, feeling in the Will the "utter Weakness of all the Powers to perform that which is truly good [i.e., believing in Christ]."16 He rightly concludes that "our Will is not free from the first fall; that is, it is not free to [the performance of] good, unless it be made free by the Son through His Spirit" (John 8:36; 16:8-11). This all seems quite Reformed. What could possibly be the problem?
I wondered why, as well as how, when the Holy Spirit performs all this inner work, and all this inner enabling in everyone who hears the Gospel, each person does not believe in Jesus as a result. Arminius' exposition on Grace and Free Will, as noted above, insists that the inner enabling work of the Holy Spirit is "absolutely necessary for the illumination of the mind, the due ordering of the affections, and the inclination of the Will to that which is good." So the Holy Spirit illumines one's mind of the Gospel, He orders rightly one's affections to desire salvation and He even inclines one's Will to believe in Christ, and yet not all who are thusly "graced" believe in Christ? How is that even possible? How does that even follow? How can anyone not conclude that all this power of the Holy Spirit seems rather inept and powerless? He continues:
It is this Grace which operates on the mind, the affections, and the will; which infuses good thoughts into the mind, inspires good desires into the affections, and bends the Will to [here is purpose] carry into execution good thoughts and good desires. This grace goes before, accompanies, and follows; it excites, assists, operates that we Will, and cooperates lest we Will in vain. It averts temptations, assists and grants [help] in the midst of temptations, sustains man against the flesh, the world, and Satan, and in this great contest grants to man the enjoyment of the victory. It raises up again those who are conquered and have fallen, establishes and supplies them with new strength, and renders them more cautious. This grace commences salvation, promotes it, and perfects and consummates [completes] it.17All of this gracious inner work and still many reject Christ? How is this even remotely possible? This inner-work of grace of God the Holy Spirit is said to even bend the Will to carry into execution good thoughts and good desires. This grace is said to even excite, assist, and operate that we Will [the good--which is faith in Christ] and cooperate lest we Will in vain. But if the Holy Spirit performs this enabling, this illumination of the mind, this ordering the affections of the heart to desire Christ and His salvation, and inclining the Will to choose Christ, then how can any mortal resist this prevenient grace of the Holy Spirit? He is giving the fallen sinner what is actually needed to trust in Christ--the Will, the inclination, the desire to choose Christ. Is man really more powerful than the Holy Spirit of God? But the question isn't really about the power of man to resist the power of the Holy Spirit. The question is Why? For me, at least, a person resisting all of this inner work is tantamount to giving sight to a blind man only for him to resist the miracle and insist that he would rather remain blind. Look, friends, that simply does not make even the slightest bit of sense. If the Spirit provides what is needed then the intended result will follow.
WHY I BECAME REFORMED
Having agreed with Arminius on the fallen state of everyone born into the world (and, obviously, having rejected Pelagius and his theology as damnable heresy), I had no other option than to embrace the Reformed faith, as this biblical theology grants the only viable option for a proper interpretation of the effectual working of Grace. Is this effectual grace given to everyone? No. Why not? Because God was willing / desiring to demonstrate or show His wrath (Ps. 5:4, 5, 6; 7:11; 11:5, 6; Rom. 1:18; Eph. 5:6; Col. 3:6; 1 Thess. 1:10; 5:9; Rev. 6:16; 14:10) and to make His power known to the objects of wrath (Rom. 9:22) who resist Him (John 1:11; 3:18, 19), hate Him (Rom. 5:10), and reject Him (John 3:36) every moment of their existence (Acts 17:26, 27, 28)--an existence that He graciously and lovingly sustains by His own mercy. In this sense, then, we clearly see even His grace, His mercy, love, patience and power in sustaining the very existence of His enemies who hate Him. He, of all sentient beings, knows how to do good to those who utterly hate Him and defy Him in sin every moment He sustains their being.
I agree with Arminius that all fallen mortals are entirely incapable of believing in Jesus Christ without the inner working of the Holy Spirit (Phil. 1:29). But, where he alludes to an effectual work, I explicitly insist that the work of the Holy Spirit must be effectual in drawing to Christ the elect of God (Eph. 1:4, 5, 11; John 6:35, 37, 44, 45, 63, 65). "The person without the Spirit does not accept the things that come from the Spirit of God but considers them foolishness, and cannot understand them because they are discerned only through the Spirit" (1 Cor. 2:14 NIV). To "those whom God has called," Christ Jesus is for us "the power of God and the wisdom of God" (1 Cor. 1:24). "It is because of Him that you are in Christ Jesus, who has become for us wisdom from God--that is, our righteousness, holiness and redemption. Therefore, as it is written, 'Let the one who boasts boast in the Lord'" (1 Cor. 1:30-31). "He chose to give us birth through the Word of Truth, that we might be a kind of firstfruits of all He created" (James 1:18). If God chose to give birth to every single person then every single person would believe in Christ. "But when the kindness and love of God our Savior appeared, He saved us, not because of righteous things we had done, but because of His mercy. He saved us through the washing of rebirth and renewal by the Holy Spirit, whom He poured out on us generously through Jesus Christ our Savior, so that, having been justified by His grace, we might become heirs having the hope of eternal life" (Titus 3:4-7).
I also became Reformed once I understood that God cannot learn any information. The early Church fathers write much about God's simple foreknowledge and they suggest that He merely foreknows what would happen among creatures who order their own lives and their own choices in and of themselves. I think they were mistaken. Arminius himself notes that God's knowledge derives from His own divine being.18 So, when Arminius appeals to God's foreknowledge of future events (which, for him, also includes the concept of Middle Knowledge), he means that God derives that knowledge not from without but from within Himself. I agree--and Arminius helped me to broaden my own views on the subject. So I believe that, if God has predetermined that a particular individual will exist in future-history, then He fore-knows all that is to be known about this person whom God has for all eternity conceived in His mind and in His eternal plan, yet that knowledge does not derive from the individual or from their so-called free choices, but from within the eternal mind and by the eternal plan of God.
If we perceive of all future acts as a blank canvas from eternity past, humanly speaking, then God and God alone prescripts that future-history. He does not somehow peer into the future, foreseeing what will happen, because there is nothing to happen without Him, apart from Him, and apart from His eternal plan. Arminius often relays the notion that "God does nothing in time which He has not decreed to do from all eternity."19 I agree even if I diverge from him on particular notions of the manner in which God decrees His world and the manner in which He executes His eternal covenant and plan (cf. Heb. 13:20). Again, though, there is nothing for God to know about the future in some nebulous bewilderment--as though God looked into His crystal ball to see what might happen if He were to do this or that; or if someone were to freely chose to do this or that. God cannot learn any information from outside His eternal Self. He knows the end from the beginning (Isa. 46:10) because He has, at least in some sense (as R.C. Sproul said), foreordained all that shall happen from beginning to end.
Does He force or coerce anyone toward sin and evil? No (James 1:13, 14). He doesn't have to, either, because we are already fallen, we want to sin, and we are eager to sin. So are the demons and devils and other forces of evil (cf. Eph. 6:12, 13). But God has the sovereign right to use wickedness and sin and evil toward His own ends (cf. Rev. 17:17). He can even prevent someone from sinning against Him and against His ultimate sovereign will (cf. Gen. 20:6). Do we do what we do because God foreordained that we do what we do? In some sense we must answer Yes. But we must also understand that we do, at times, what we want to do--especially regarding sin. God is still just in allowing / permitting / foreordaining that we sin when we want to sin because we want to sin and He must concur with our sin if He permits us to sin. God hates sin (cf. Prov. 6:16, 17, 18, 19; 8:13; Isa. 59:2; Rom. 6:23). That should be a given. So, if we sin, we sin because we wanted to sin and because God permitted us to sin. God's foreordination of our sin is not a primary cause or effect of our sin. God does not have to bring about our sin. We are quite capable of bringing about all manner of sin and evil. In short, He is sovereign, we are fallen. He is Creator. We are the creature. He is God, we are His subjects, and if God had mercy on only one among us sinners then that would have been mercy enough.
CONCLUSION
I actually still like Jacob Arminius, and Remonstrants like Hugo Grotius and Johan van Oldenbarnevelt (not so much Simon Episcopius, who rejects the inheritance of a sin nature from Adam, and the reality of a resultant Radical Depravity); and I still love my Classical Arminian and Wesleyan brothers and sisters immensely. We're family. I count them as my dear brothers and sisters in Christ. I pray God's blessings upon each one of them and their families. I also won't spend a lot of time debating or arguing about these issues. We agree on so much!
I disagree more with Provisionists, like Dr. Leighton Flowers &c. (whom I still love in Christ), and I think their errors are more serious; they agree more with Pelagius about an issue such as Free Will, but they certainly have the great majority of the second- and third-century Church fathers for historical support (though I do not think they have biblical support). Thankfully, however, Provisionists do reject Pelagius' ground for salvation in the keeping of the Law, merit and good works, insisting instead in the grace of God (meaning not by merit nor by works) through faith in Jesus by the proclaimed power of the Gospel. For this we should all rejoice. These are a few of my theological arguments on the issues and I know many of my brothers and sisters will not agree--and, honestly, I'm at peace with that. We each have our convictions, our consciences, and we have to walk our own path with Christ--and we can walk together in Him as long as our focus is on Him and not on us, our imagined efforts or supposed human strength, or inner goodness. There is One who is Good: God in Trinity, Father, Son and Holy Spirit.
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1 Pelagius, "On Virginity," in B.R. Rees, Pelagius: Life and Letters (Woodbridge: The Boydell Press, 1998), 2.82.
2 Ibid., 2.84.
3 "On the Christian Life," 2.107.
4 "On the Divine Law," 2.94.
5 "On the Christian Life," 2.111.
6 Ibid., 2.117.
7 Ibid., 2.122.
8 "On Virginity," 2.74.
9 Ibid.
10 Ibid., 2.75.
11 Robert F. Evans, Pelagius: Inquiries and Reappraisals (Eugene: Wipf & Stock Publishers, 2010), 111.
12 Jacob Arminius, "Examination of Gomarus," in The Works of Arminius, the London Edition, Three Volumes, trans. and eds. James and William Nichols (Grand Rapids: Baker Book House, 1996), 3.657.
13 Arminius, "IV. Grace and Free Will," Works, 2.700.
14 Ibid.
15 Ibid., 2.192.
16 Ibid., 2.192-93.
17 Ibid. 2.700.
18 Ibid., 2.341.
19 Ibid., 2.227, 350, 368.
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