Calvinism vs. Arminianism Part III: Irresistible Grace Part 2
The main objection to Calvinism is that God forces himself on people and makes them choose a certain way, and takes away their free will. Actually it is quite the opposite, irresistible grace is compatible with preaching that persuades people to repent and believe. After being regenerated the believer has a new nature and therefore his choice is truly free. But from the Arminian perspective, the believer doesn’t have a new nature and so he must be “wooed” into making the right choice, which doesn't seem like a free choice to me.
What seems so funny to me is that no Arminian would say that when we get to heaven we won’t have any free will. But from their position, man, as well as God, could choose to sin in heaven. In heaven we have our new nature and the old nature has died completely, but from the libertarian perspective we (as well as God) could choose against our nature and choose to sin. Most Arminian theologians don’t take this prospective when we are in heaven, they would say that we still have free will but we always choose according to our nature and will always be perfect. But they disagree with the same perspective on earth. The Calvinist says that before regeneration, the person has only a sinful nature; he has free will but will always use his free will to act according to his nature, which is sin. But from the Calvinist perspective God regenerates us and gives us a new nature, it takes us back to a state kind of like Adam before the fall, he had free will and could choose good and bad, but after the fall he and everyone after him had a sinful nature. The Arminian perspective says that through prevenient grace, God helps us to choose Jesus without giving us a new nature.
Lets take a look at the Arminian position and some problems I have with it. Arminianism holds the concept of prevenient or preceding grace which is given equally to all humans at some point in their life. Classical Arminians affirm total depravity, but according to John Wesley, prevenient grace offsets the effects of the fall and the extent of total depravity (Works of Wesley, 10:229-30). So, even though they affirm total depravity including a person’s will, it is only hypothetical because prevenient grace restores everyone’s free will. Prevenient grace enables a person to corporate with saving grace by restoring a person’s free will.
Ironically, Classical Arminians believe in comaptibilist free will (meaning that man can only make choices that are compatible with his nature) prior to prevenient grace. After prevenient grace, the person is given a libertarian free will (meaning that man can make choices regardless of his nature). In other words, prior to prevenient grace the Arminian along with the Calvinist affirm the depraved will and the inability to submit to God, but after prevenient grace the Arminian is freed from his nature (without being given a new one!) and can choose Jesus in the libertarian sense. So prevenient grace places the sinner into a “neutral” state that is neither regenerate nor unregenerate, and allows them to choose. Also, most Arminians believe that we go back to a compatiblist free will in heaven. The problem I have with that view is that, I don’t see where it says in scripture that we are placed in an in-between state before we respond in faith.
That is how I understand the concept of prevenient grace from reading Wesley and other Arminian theologians, if I presented it wrong or unfairly, then help me understand it and I will back up and punt again (it won’t be the first time). I think it is good to study and figure something out, but if some new information comes up, I think it is good to take a fair look at it and if it seems right and biblical, then you should be able to believe it. We don’t have everything figured out, and a person shouldn’t be so stuck on an idea or system that He can’t examine it and let go of it if it is proven wrong.
The problem I have with this concept of prevenient grace is that I don’t see it taught in the scriptures. The main one often used is John 1:9.
Here are some of my thoughts and speculations that led me to dismiss Arminianism: Arminians seem to start from the position that God is good and must be fair to all sinners, thus putting God in a box and saying you have to act in this manner. They start from the position that God wanted to create us because he wanted people that would choose to love him freely. (First, God didn’t have to create us because He needed someone to love him freely. He doesn’t need anything; he would be perfectly alright enjoying the communion that the trinity shares forever.) But, since God is good he must treat all sinners fairly, and the concept of prevenient grace is what is needed for God to be fair to all sinners and man to have its libertarian free will, which God is obligated to give man because of the manner in which we have defined him to act. So from my perspective it seems like this concept of prevenient grace was forced on scripture to make God act in the way we think he should act. Even with prevenient grace Arminianism still has holes, but without prevenient grace it is impossible for it to hold up.
Calvinist begin from the point taken from the Westminster Shorter Catechism, which states that “Man’s chief end is to glorify God, and to enjoy him forever. The Calvinist start from the position that God is sovereign over everything and is not obligated to give man anything other than what is deserved, which is punishment for our sins. They believe that God does everything to bring glory to himself (Soli Deo Gloria). This might seem selfish or prideful of God, but He has to be for himself before he can be for us. The thing that is of most worth is God, so God has to value himself and his glory above all, if He valued our rights above himself, he would be committing idolatry and would no longer be God. And therefore, we would be considered higher than God. So Jesus death on the cross was ultimately to bring glory to God, his death did that by allowing him to show his love, forgiveness, mercy, and grace to us, but we are not the reason or the plan, we were just part of the larger plan that God has had from the beginning of time. To say that he had to die for our sins because He is love and that is how he is supposed to act is not true. He would have still been the same God, he would still have been just and righteous to let us all perish, but because he wants to bring glory to himself, he choose to die for our sins so that his love, mercy, and forgiveness would also be known and that his name would be more glorious than if he chose not to. ( 1 John 2:12, Isaiah 43:7, 2 Sam 7:23, Isaiah 63:1-14, Rom 3:25-26, Exodus 9:16, Isaiah 48:9-11)
Lets get back to the Arminian perspective. Another problem I have is that Arminians can’t explain why some choose Jesus and some don’t. If all people are given an equal measure of prevenient grace at some point in their life then why do some choose to believe and some don’t. From the scriptures we see a God who is active in our salvation and that always succeeds in saving those who he has called. But with the Arminian position, God succeeds sometimes but fails other times. If prevenient grace puts everyone in a neutral state, what makes some choose Jesus and other not? Is it something inside the person that they could boast about for finding within themselves what the others don’t? Is it because they were more intelligent or righteous than the ones who don’t believe? Now Arminians would never say that they chose God for these reasons, but that they chose God because they recognized their need for him and his forgiveness, but you are still left with the big question of why. If God desires all to be saved, and if God, as the Arminian describes, knows who and who doesn’t believe and why they don’t believe, then why can’t God arrange the presentation of the gospel in such a way that all people believe and still have free will in the libertarian sense? That seems plausible to me.
The Calvinist refers to the grace given equally to all as common grace. This is the grace given to all men that gives mankind knowledge of God and their sin. It allows the gospel to be preached, because God would be righteous and just in punishing unbelievers right now, but God is patient and shows mercy. This grace is different from irresistible grace. Common grace is separate from irresistible grace and it doesn’t lead to saving grace, like prevenient grace leads to saving grace.
Sadly, a lot of times I get looked down on for taking an unpopular belief that is generally misunderstood, and a lot of times my comments are taken personally so I just wanted to clear that up. I am just debating the system of Arminianism; it is not an attack on people that hold that view. I still believe Arminians are Christians; I just differ in the way I understand how it happened. Likewise, Arminians should still think that Calvinist are Christians, and not attack them personally by making outrageous claims without understanding what they actually teach.
Well if you made it this far in the blog :), that is about all I have on irresistible grace. The next post will be on the doctrine of Limited Atonement, which should get really interesting.
2 comments:
"What seems so funny to me is that no Arminian would say that when we get to heaven we won’t have any free will. But from their position, man, as well as God, could choose to sin in heaven. In heaven we have our new nature and the old nature has died completely, but from the libertarian perspective we (as well as God) could choose against our nature and choose to sin. Most Arminian theologians don’t take this prospective when we are in heaven, they would say that we still have free will but we always choose according to our nature and will always be perfect. But they disagree with the same perspective on earth.The Calvinist says that before regeneration, the person has only a sinful nature; he has free will but will always use his free will to act according to his nature, which is sin. But from the Calvinist perspective God regenerates us and gives us a new nature, it takes us back to a state kind of like Adam before the fall, he had free will and could choose good and bad, but after the fall he and everyone after him had a sinful nature."
You lost me in this whole part here Walk. I don't think I'm understanding it right, so see if you can help me make it make sense.
“Most Arminian theologians don’t take this prospective when we are in heaven, they would say that we still have free will but we always choose according to our nature and will always be perfect. But they disagree with the same perspective on earth.”
Are you saying we should take this same perspective on earth? If we did take this perspective literal as you mentioned…then, since we have new nature after regeneration, we will always be perfect. I definitely don’t think you would say that we should preach a perfectionist gospel where a truly regenerate person never sins, or are you?
“What seems so funny to me is that no Arminian would say that when we get to heaven we won’t have any free will. But from their position, man, as well as God, could choose to sin in heaven”
What position are you referring to implies that we can choose to sin in heaven? If like you said, our old nature has died completely then we won’t sin. That’s the difference between heaven and earth. While still in our earthly bodies don’t we still have part of that old nature inside of us even after regeneration? If not, then how can we sin?
“ But from the Calvinist perspective God regenerates us and gives us a new nature, it takes us back to a state kind of like Adam before the fall, he had free will and could choose good and bad…”
Obviously Adam was able to sin, so from this Calvinist perspective if we have this new nature and like Adam can “choose good and bad” then what would stop us from choosing good and bad in heaven?
I missed your whole point in this paragraph. What is the conflict or, what is separating the two views here? What is the Calvinist view on heaven? Will we have free will? If things in heaven aren’t different from what they are here on earth then we could definitely still choose to sin, even from the Calvinist perspective as you have described it.
Yeah, it can get pretty confusing at times when I try to explain all this while I am jumping back and forth between two views. I think I see where you misunderstood, let me try to explain it a little better.
Let me start by explaining the Calvinist side better. First, the Calvinist believes that we have free will in heaven and that the old nature has died completely, and we only have the new nature. Since Calvinist believes in compatibilist free will, it follows that while in heaven we will always choose according to our nature and therefore will always choose good and will never sin.
On earth before the sinner is regenerated he only has the sinful or old nature. He still has free will, but can only make choices according to his nature and therefore will always choose darkness. (Note that this is only in reference to God, everything he does according to God is sin. He can do things that are considered good by other humans, but can do nothing good in respect to God.)
Only after the sinner has been regenerated and received his new nature can he respond and do anything good from God’s perspective. Now, while on earth the Calvinist believe that the new and old nature are both still present, so the person still sins, but he can also do good according to God. Through God’s grace the believer is sanctified slowly and the new nature becomes more prominent, but the old nature never goes away until the person dies and receives his glorified body.
So what I was pointing out was that the Calvinist believe in compatibilist free will before regeneration, after regeneration but still on earth, and also while in heaven. So, I don’t mean that things stay the same in heaven, I am saying it is the same concept but from the opposite side. In heaven there is only the new nature so we always choose good, on earth before regeneration there is only the old nature and we always choose sin. After regeneration but still on earth, there are both natures so there is this battle between them.
The same concept is applied to God, God is perfect and his nature is perfect, there is no darkness in him so he always chooses according to his nature which is perfect. He cannot choose against his nature and choose to sin, just like he cannot stop being God.
Now lets go back to the Arminian perspective. I was saying that Arminians believe in compatabilist free will up until prevenient grace, which then gives them a libertarian free will (this is the reason I mentioned that they affirm total depravity but only hypothetically). Then when the believer is in heaven they go back to a compatabilist free will.
When you mentioned this:
"Are you saying we should take this same perspective on earth? If we did take this perspective literal as you mentioned…then, since we have new nature after regeneration, we will always be perfect. I definitely don’t think you would say that we should preach a perfectionist gospel where a truly regenerate person never sins, or are you?"
What I meant when I referred to the same perspective, was that it was the same concept but from the opposite side. So Arminians agree with Calvinist while in heaven (that we choose according to our nature), but on earth they disagree with the same concept but opposite, that we choose according to our nature which is sin. They say that after prevenient grace we are given a libertarian free will and can choose something that is totally out of our nature. They go to a libertarian free will here because they don’t believe the sinner has been given a new nature yet, so he is choosing outside of his nature and therefore must have a libertarian free will. This would be the equivalent of God choosing to sin, or God ceasing to be God, because it goes against his nature which is perfect. I was trying to say that no Arminian would say that God could choose to sin or could cease being God, but that is the same concept of a person choosing God on earth when it is not in his nature, which they agree with.
Actually, Wesley taught a perfectionism that says we can get rid of the old nature while on earth. Not all Arminians agree with him on that but a lot of them do.
Maybe that helped, lol. It seemed like it got confusing when I was jumping back and forth between viewpoints, sometimes it was hard to tell when I switched viewpoints. I don’t know, if that don’t clear it up, I can try again, lol.
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