In the last BLOG we looked at some writings of Louis Berkhof and how his historical view gave us a big picture of what happened. The Arminian view really came about in an effort to mediate between Augustinianism (Calvinism) and Pelagianism. It adopted two contradictory views and tried to combine them in a mediating view. For example, it tried to make the grace of Augustine friends with the free-will of Pelagius. So it adopted both and tried to adjust other things to enable them to hold these things. Then we saw that in an effort to keep predestination they tried to say that God foresaw that people would believe and obey and so He destined them. But this is not a mediating view. The teaching of Scripture is that salvation is by grace alone plus nothing else. Any addition to grace changes the teaching of salvation by grace alone into something else. The teaching that God destines sinners based on what they do changes the teaching of predestination into something totally different. It is no wonder that men like John Owen looked upon these teachings and thought they changed the orthodox view of the Gospel and of God. As Owen puts it, “They have placed an altar for their idol [free-will] in the holy temple, on the right hand of the altar of God, and on it offer sacrifice to their own net and drag; at least…not all to God, nor all to free-will, but let the sacrifice of praise, for all good things, be divided between them.”
The above quotes sound strange to modern ears. When it is thought that it is more important to be gracious than it is to represent Scripture faithfully and accurately, then men who stand up and declare that others are wrong and even heretical are rare today. But Owen was a man who declared his position and stood for it. He believed that free-will and its attending doctrines and denials cut the heart out of the Gospel itself and inevitably led to a changing of the doctrine of God. William Cunningham, in his Historical Theology, agrees with that. Referring to the Council of Trent (Roman Catholic council on theology), he notes that Trent denied the Protestant doctrine:
“This denial, however, of the great Protestant doctrine of the utter bondage and servitude of the will of unrenewed men to sin,–of their inability to will anything spiritually good,–was not only the application they made of their erroneous and defective views about the corruption and depravity of human nature, in their bearing upon the natural powers of man with reference to their own salvation. They have further deduced from the doctrine,–that the free-will of fallen men, even in reference to spiritual good accompanying salvation, is only wakened or enfeebled, but not lost or extinguished,–the position that man’s free-will co-operates with divine grace in the process of his regeneration, and this in a sense which the Reformers and orthodox Protestant churches have regarded as inconsistent with scriptural views of man/s natural capacities and of the gospel method of salvation.”
One key issue at this point, however, is that this denial of Trent is in their section on justification. The teaching of free-will reaches into the doctrine of justification and makes large ripples there as well. Cunningham says that it is “their doctrine of the cooperation of the free-will of man with the grace of God in the work of redemption” that paves the way “for their grand and fundamental heresy on the subject of justification.” Here is a point that it would be wise to study closely. Martin Luther wrote his book on The Bondage of the Will in order to defend the gospel of grace alone. It is precisely at this point where the doctrine of grace alone sets out how deeply the “alone” part reaches in the Gospel. It is also this point where many who say they believe in grace alone depart from the true teaching of the doctrine. Here is perhaps the main difference between Roman Catholicism and the Reformers. It is also the main difference between Arminianism and Calvinism. The fundamental problem with Roman Catholicism, if you listen to Luther, is that it did not believe in the bondage of the will and so did not really hold to grace alone which made it impossible for them to hold to justification by faith alone. Roman Catholicism is fundamentally Arminian in its theology. The rest is essentially external applications of historical rites to its Arminianism.
Arminianism asserts that man can do something to prepare himself or to do an act of the will in order to be regenerated. That is a necessary teaching if one is an Arminian. If the will is free and is able to act and co-operate with God in salvation and is the deciding factor if a person is saved or not saved, then salvation is not by grace alone. This means that salvation is by an act of the will and of grace, but it is not of grace alone. The reason that the Reformers set out justification by faith alone was to guard the biblical teaching of grace alone. Once free-will has removed grace alone, it has made its way onto the throne of the Gospel of justification by faith alone and has deposed it in reality. When one has deposed faith alone in reality, the adjustments to the character of God have already been done. He is no longer completely sovereign in His giving of grace which means it is no longer grace.
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