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Arminianism

Arminianism as the customary antithesis to Calvinism, is, within the limits of the evangelical doctrines, the theology that tends to freedom in opposition to the theology of necessity or absolutism. Jacob Arminius [1559-1609] was a Dutch theologian who was soon convinced of the untenableness of either the higher or lower predestination. He found himself generally assailed by the high Calvinists as a Pelagian and Socinian. Cicero had long before said that "Those who maintain an eternal series of causes despoil the mind of man of free-will, and bind it in the necessity of fate."

Predestination, consists in the predetermination of tho Divine Will, which, determining alike the volitions of tho will and the succession of physical events, reduces both to a like unfreedom; But those who hold Predestination very uniformly hold also to volitional necessity, or tho subjection of will in its action to the control of strongest motive force. And as the Divine Will is held subject to the same law, so Necessity, as master of God, man, and the universe, becomes a universal and absolute Fate. This doctrine, installed by Saint Augustine, and still more absolutely by John Calvin, in Christian theology, is from them called Augustinianism, or more usually Calvinism.

In opposition to this theology, Arminianism maintains that in order to true responsibility, guilt, penalty, especially eternal penalty, there must be in the agent a free-will; and iu a true responsible free-will the freedom must consist in the power, even in the same circumstances and under the same motives, of choosing either way. No man can justly be eternally damned, according to Arminianism, for a choice or action which he cannot help. If fixed by Divine decree or volitional necessity to the particular act, he cannot be held responsible or justly punished.

Calvinism affirms that God does unchangeably and eternally foreordain whatsoever comes to pass. That is, God from all eternity predetermines not only all physical events, but all the volitions of responsible agents. To this Arminianism objects that the predetermination of the agent's volitions destroys the freedom of his will; that it makes God the responsible predeterminer and willer of sin; and that it makes every sinner to say that his sin accords with the Divine Will, and therefore, so far as himself is concerned, is right. It makes God first decree the sin, and then punish the sinner for the sin decreed. The Arminian theory is this: God does from all eternity predetermine tho laws of nature and the succession of physical and necessary events; but as to free moral agents, God, knowing all possible futurities, does choose that plan of his own conduct which, in view of what each agent will ultimately in freedom do, will bring out the best results.

Calvinism affirms that if man is free God is not a sovereign. Just so far as man is free to will either way, God's power is limited. Arminians reply that if man is not free, God is not a sovereign, but sinks to a mere mechanist. If man's will is as fixed as the physical machinery of the universe, then all is machinery and not a government, and God is a machinist and not a ruler. The higher man's freedom of will is exalted above mechanism, so much higher is God elevated as a sovereign. Here, according to Arminians, Calvinism degrades and destroys God's sovereignty, and Arminianism exalts it.

Calvinism maintains the doctrine that all volitions are determined and fixed by the force of strongest motive, just as the strokes of a clock-hammer are fixed and determined by the strongest force. The will can no more choose otherwise in a given case than the clock-hammer can strike otherwise. There is "no "power of contrary choice." Calvinism often speaks, indeed, of "free agents," "free-will," "self-determining power," and " will's choosing by its own power;" but bring it to analysis, and it will always, say the Arminians, be found that the freedom is the same as that of the clockhammer—the freedom to strike as it does, and no otherwise. Arminianism affirms that if the agent has no power to will otherwise than motive-force determines, any more than a cloek-hammcr can strike otherwise, then there is no justice in requiring a different volition any more than a different clock-stroke. It would be requiring an impossibility. And to punish an agent for not performing an impossibility is injustice, and to punish him eternally, an infinite injustice. Arminianism charges, therefore, that Calvinism destroys all just punishment, and so all free volition and all divine government.

Calvinism maintains that the death of Christ is an expiation for man's sin: first, for the guilt of men for Adam's sin, so that it is possible for God to forgive and save; and second, for actual sin — that thereby the influence of the Spirit restores the lapsed moral powers, regenerates and saves tho man. But these saving benefits aro reserved for the elect only. Arminianism, claiming a far richer doctrine of grace, extends it to the very foundations of the existence of Adam's posterity. Grace underlies our very nature and life. All the institutes of salvation — the chance of probation, the Spirit, the Word, the pardon, the regeneration, the resurrection, and the life eternal — are through him. And Arminianism, against Calvinism, proclaims that these are for all. Christ died for all alike; for no one man more than for any other man, and sufficient grace and opportunity for salvation is given to every man.

Calvinism argues that in this world God distributes advantages, such as wealth, rank, beauty, vigor, and intellect, not accordiug to desert, but purely as a sovereign. Hence, in the same way he may bestow on one faith and eternal life, and on others unbelief and eternal death. Arminianism replies that this very analogy between the temporal and the eternal bestowment proves the precise reverse. In this probationary world advantages are professedly distributed without regard to judicial rectitude. Men are not rewarded according to their works or voluntary character. The wicked are set on high, and Satan is this world's god. And the very difference between the dispensation of the world and that of the kingdom of God is, that in the latter blessedness is placed at every man's choice, and the result is judicially according to voluntary faith and works.

As the freedom of the individual, and his own intransferable responsibility for his own voluntary character and conduct, are fundamental principles with Arminianism, it is in its own nature adverse to civil or religious despotism. It has been said that when Romanism persecutes, it accords with its fundamental principle, the denial of right of private judgment, while when Protestantism persecutes, it contradicts itself.

Calvinism establishes an infinite and eternal distinction between different parts of mankind made by divine prerogative, by which one is born in a divine aristocracy, and the other in an eternal helpless and hopeless pariahism; whilst Arminianism, holding every man equal before God, proclaims an equal yet resistible grace for all, a universal atonement and Saviour alike to all, an equal power of acceptance in all, a free, unpredestincd chance for every man to be the artificer of his own eternal, as well as temporal, fortunes. Caste, partialism are tho characteristics of the former; equality, universality, republicanism, of the latter. It is as plain as consciousness can make any fact that it is the latter that is the natural ally, not of monarchies, aristocracies, or hierarchies, but of regulated freedom. Hence, neither Luther nor Calvin was any more a republican than Eck or Erasmus. Augustine and Gottschalk were good papists, and Augustinianisin was as entirely at home under the tiara of Gregory the Great as in the court of Charlemagne.

The theology of freedom, essentially Arminianism, in opposition to predestination, necessitated volitions, and imputation of guilt to the innocent, is universally acknowledged to have been the doctrine of the entire Christian Church through the martyr age of the first three centuries. Arminians contend that it is well known when predestination was introduced into the Church — namely, by Augustine — as it is known when transubstantiation and image-worship were introduced; that it was in tho fourth century, when Pelagius upon one extreme made free-will dispense with divine grace, Augustine on the other extreme made divine grace irresistibly nullify free-will, and thus both lost their balance; that both invented dogmas never before recognized in the Church.

Wesleyan Methodism is now by all admitted to bo a great modern Arminian development. Beginning most humbly as a half-unconscious awakening amid the general religious chill of Protestantism, its theology is very definite, and very nearly the exact theology of James Arminius himself, and of the first three centuries. Cradled in both the Arminianism and High Churchism of the English establishment, Wesley's maturer years earnestly approved the Arminianism, but severed it from the High-Churchism. The connection between Arminianism and High-Churchisin was hereby clearly revealed to be historical and incidental rather than intrinsic or logical.