Arminianism and Calvinism are doctrinal systems that deal with how God saves sinners. According to Clark Pinnock, Arminianism teaches that “God is love, and therefore expresses his power, not by having to control everything like an oriental despot, but by giving humanity salvation and eternal life under the conditions of mutuality.”3 By “conditions of mutuality,” Pinnock means that man can choose to accept the salvation God has offered through Jesus Christ, independent of any enabling on God’s part.4 Thus, Arminians view salvation as a “mutual” or cooperative effort between God and man; God offers salvation, and man may freely choose to accept or reject the offer.
Calvinism, on other hand, teaches that man cannot choose God unless God first chooses man. Left to himself, man is unwilling and unable to choose to accept salvation. Thus, salvation is not a mutual effort: of necessity, it is completely one-sided. “According to Calvin, it is man’s ethical hostility to God that keeps him from seeing the true situation about himself and his environment.”5 Thus, a “sinner needs new light as well as a new power of sight. He needs the light of the grace of God in Christ.”6 Calvinism recognizes that, apart from this “new light” and “new power of sight” given to him by God, a sinner cannot and will not accept God’s offer of salvation through Jesus Christ.
The Calvinist/Arminian debate is quite heated. Few subjects have caused such division within and among churches as has this one. However, as in all areas of theology, we must ask the question, which view is biblical? As we will see below, Calvinism is the correct biblical model of salvation for several reasons:
1. Calvinism has a correct view of God’s sovereignty over salvation
Paul begins his epistle to the Ephesians by blessing the Lord (1:3). In doing so, he describes the salvation God has offered to man. Ephesians 1:4–6 says,
Just as He [God] chose us in Him [Jesus] before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before Him.” In love He predestined us to adoption as sons through Jesus Christ to Himself, according to the kind intention of His will, to the praise of the glory of His grace, which He freely bestowed on us in the Beloved.
In Romans 9, Paul weeps over the damnation of his fellow Israelites. As he does so, he makes two very telling statements, about God’s act of salvation. In Romans 9:16 he says, “So then it [salvation] does not depend on the man who wills or the man who runs, but on God who has mercy.” Paul goes on to say in Romans 9:18, “So then He [God] has mercy on whom He desires, and He hardens whom He desires.” Here we see that God chooses man, apart from anything man does.
The books of Romans and Ephesians tell us that before the foundation of the world God chose some to salvation (Eph 1:4–6), and that He chose those “whom He desire[d]” (Rom 9:18). These passages teach us that God gives “new light as well as a new power of sight”7 in bringing about salvation. This is the teaching that Calvinism upholds.
Arminianism teaches that God’s sovereignty over salvation means that God knows who will accept salvation but does not choose who will accept salvation. Thus, Arminians try to make a distinction between God’s predestination and His foreknowledge.
To say that God has foreknowledge means that he has real knowledge or cognition of something before it actually happens or exists in history . . .Their (sinners’) choice of Jesus Christ is not predestined; the choice is foreknown and the subsequent blessings of salvation are then predestined.8
In other words, God predestined the offer of salvation but not the people who would accept it. He predestined His Son to die for sinners, but He did not predestine who would accept this sacrifice – He only foreknew who would. God knew who would accept salvation, but He did not cause them to do so.
This Arminian argument is neither logical nor biblical. It is illogical because for God to know a future event is for that future event inevitably to occur. If God knows that you will eat breakfast tomorrow, then you will eat breakfast tomorrow regardless of what you “choose” to do. Likewise, if God knows that you will accept the salvific offer of His Son Jesus Christ, then you will accept that offer. For God to have foreknowledge of our salvation is for our salvation to occur, regardless of our “choices.”
The Arminian argument is also unbiblical. Romans states, “So then it [salvation] does not depend on the man who wills or the man who runs, but on God who has mercy . . . So then He [God] has mercy on whom He desires, and He hardens whom He desires.” Ephesians tells us that God chose us “before the foundation of the world that we would be holy and blameless in Him.” Scripture clearly teaches that God foreknew and predestined some people to be saved, regardless of their actions and before the world was created.
Arminianism tries to make a distinction between God’s foreknowledge and predestination, but this is a distinction that Scripture never makes. God simply cannot know the future without predestining it. Whatever future He knows, He created.9
2. Calvinism has a biblical view of man’s depravity10
In Psalm 51:5, King David prays, “Behold, I was brought forth in iniquity, and in sin my mother conceived me.” This psalm demonstrates that human beings are born into sin. In Romans 5:12, Paul develops this point further: “Just as through one man sin entered into the world, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men, because all sinned.” All people are born into sin and, based on their own merit, they cannot escape its penalty.
That is why Paul says in Ephesians 2:4–5 and 8–9,
But God, being rich in mercy, because of His great love with which He loved us, even when we were dead in our transgressions, made us alive together with Christ (by grace you have been saved) . . . For by grace you have been saved through faith; and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God; not as a result of works, so that no one should boast.
To reiterate: “Even when we were dead in our transgressions, He [God] made us alive together with Christ.” Man is born spiritually dead and cannot, by an act of his own, choose Jesus Christ for salvation. “It is man’s ethical hostility to God [his sin] that keeps him from seeing the true situation about himself and his environment.”11 God must change our hearts; we can do nothing to improve our sinful condition. This is the Calvinist view.
Arminianism, on the other hand, teaches that man is born not into a sin, but into a sinful environment.
The individual’s sin cannot lie simply in what befalls him or her, as if falling into sin were like catching measles or being born with spina bifida. Rather, the individual’s choice to be the sinful person is genetic and environmental heritage has produced the choice to be a sinner.12
In other words, man is born not into a life of sin, but into a world of sin. We have not caught sin like a disease, nor are we born with it. Instead, to the Arminian, sin is a choice that we make as a result of living in a sinful environment. The consequences of this distinction are enormous: if man is not inherently sinful – born in a sinful state – then he is free to choose to accept God’s gift of salvation. But if man is born into a sinful state, then he cannot.13
This Arminian argument is incorrect. When it comes to salvation, the biblical authors do not make a distinction between a sinful world and a sinful state. While it is true that we are born into a world that is suffering from sinful consequences,14 it is also true that we are born into a sinful condition. In discussing his sin with Bathsheba, David said, “In sin my mother conceived me.” Why would David say this? He said this because it was his sinful condition even before his birth that led to his sinful condition at adulthood. He was born into more than a sinful world; he was born into a sinful state.
This is what Paul meant when he said, “Therefore, just as through one man sin entered into the world . . . and so death spread to all men, because all sinned.” The death Paul refers to is not an inherited “life” corrupted by a world tainted with sin.15 Paul is not discussing the consequences of a sinful world, but the consequences of a personal sinfulness – an inheritance passed down to each human being through Adam. Through Adam’s sin, sin has corrupted man’s very nature, not just his environment:
Not a particular sin, but the inherent propensity to sin entered the human realm; men became sinners by nature. Adam passed to all his descendants the inherent sinful nature he possessed because of his first disobedience. That nature is present from the moment of conception (Ps 51:5), making it impossible for man to live in a way that pleases God.16
Man is born spiritually dead, separated from the life that is offered in Christ.17 Because of this, the Arminian distinction between man’s sinful nature and man’s sinful environment is simply incorrect.
3. Calvinism has a correct view of man’s responsibility in light of God’s sovereignty.
In light of all that has been said above, a question may arise: Does Calvinism teach that man has any responsibility related to his acceptance of or rejection of Jesus Christ? If God chooses some to salvation, are we still held accountable for our actions? The answer is, yes! In Matthew 12:36, Jesus said, “And I say to you, that every careless word that men shall speak, they shall render an account for it in the day of judgment.” Romans 14:10, 12 states, “For we shall all stand before the judgment seat of God . . . So then each one of us shall give an account of himself to God.”
While God is sovereign over every action we perform, we are still held accountable for those actions:18
Human responsibility is a basic teaching of Scripture. But the meaning of human responsibility must be taken from Scripture itself, not deduced from a supposed “experience of freedom” taken from non-scriptural philosophy. Accordingly, Calvinism relates human responsibility to the all-inclusive plan of God.19
Man’s responsibility is subservient to God’s sovereignty; not vice versa. Man’s responsibility for his actions “must be taken from Scripture itself.” This is what Calvinism does in its relation of “human responsibility to the all-inclusive plan of God.” Man is responsible for His actions, but those actions ultimately are determined and predestined by God.
Arminianism teaches that man is responsible for his actions, but this is because man has freedom to commit whatever actions he so chooses. “Genuine freedom means that the causal conditions do not determine the person’s choice or action.”20 In other words, freedom can occur only when there are no “causal conditions” determining an action. Man can be held accountable only for actions that he is free to commit – actions that are not predetermined. Dave Hunt sums up this sentiment when he writes:
If God, as Calvinism teaches, foreordained every thought, word, and deed of mankind, He is the instigator and perpetrator of evil, His commands and judgment are a pretense, and man is blameless. If God causes all, how can He be righteous and man guilty of the wickedness God causes him to do?21
According to Arminianism, man could be held responsible for his actions only if he were free to commit them, and he cannot be free to commit them if God predestines (“causes”) them.
This concept of man’s freedom is contrary to the biblical view that, before salvation, man is a slave to sin and could not choose salvation, apart from God’s divine enablement. In John 8:34, Jesus said, “Truly, truly, I say to you, everyone who commits sin is the slave of sin.” Romans 5:8 says, “While we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.”22 Man’s slavery to sin inhibits his freedom to choose salvation. Second Peter 2:19 says, “For by what a man is overcome, by this he is enslaved.” Due to our birth into sin, we have been overcome by sin, and the result is that God must choose us in order to save us. We could not choose Him on our own! That is why Ephesians 1:4 tells us that God “chose us in Him before the foundation of the world.”
In an attempt to honor man’s freedom, Arminianism redefines what a “choice” is.23 A biblical choice is ultimately made by God, not by man. God is the only one with the “genuine freedom” that Arminians give to man. The Bible does not say that man requires “genuine freedom” to be held accountable for his actions. While man is responsible for what he chooses to do, 24 God is the one who ultimately chooses or predestines all his endeavors.25
1 1 Tim 4:16. While this command was written to Paul’s disciple Timothy (1 Tim 1:2), it goes without saying that every believer should be aware of his life and what he teaches to others.
2 While every area of the Arminian/Calvinist debate cannot be covered in this brief reply, a good source on this debate is Dave Hunt and James White’s Debating Calvinism (Sisters, Ore.: Multnomah Publishers, 2004).
3 The Grace of God, The Will of Man: A Case for Arminianism (Grand Rapids: Zondervan Publishing House, 1989) xi.
4 Although Pinnock does not develop this idea in his section of The Grace of God, The Will of Man, Fritz Guy comments, “One of the most serious ways in which the course of Christian theology has been misled by its classical and medieval heritage has been the assumption that the primary fact about God is omnipotent sovereignty and that the evidence of this sovereignty is the exercise of power to control events, including the actions of all of humanity” (Grace of God, Will of Man, 33). In other words, Arminians believe that it is wrong to assert that all of man’s actions are chosen by God. Guy goes on to say that it is against God’s love to disallow some humans to choose Jesus for salvation (Ibid, 36–42).
5 Van Til, The Case for Calvinism (Philadelphia, Penn.: Presbyterian and Reformed Co., 1968) 107.
8Jack W. Cottrell in Grace Unlimited, ed. by Clark H. Pinnock (Minneapolis, Minn.: Bethany House Publishers, 1975) 59, 62.
10 Alan Cairns, Dictionary of Theological Terms (Greenville, S. C.: Ambassador Emerald International, 2002). “Depravity” is a result of man’s first sin in the Garden of Eden (Gen 3), by which “man became guilty (liable to punishment) and polluted (without original righteousness, having a positively evil bent” (132). An example of this depravity is small children. Parents never have to teach their children to do wrong; they have to teach them to do right. Why? Because children (and all human beings, for that matter) are born into depravity.
12 C. Stephen Evans in The Grace of God, The Will of Man, 187.
13 Although some Arminians deny man’s sinful condition from birth (e.g. Evans’ quote – footnote 12), many Arminians do believe that man is in fact born into a sinful state. Some even say that they believe man is depraved. A key distinction arises, however, when Arminians claim that man’s depravity is not complete, that man somehow possesses enough inherent goodness that he may choose to accept salvation.
Millard J. Erickson, Concise Dictionary of Christian Theology (Grand Rapids: Baker Book House, 1994). Arminians balance man’s depravity and his ability to choose salvation with the doctrine of prevenient grace. Prevenient grace is “the belief that although all persons begin life with a sinful nature, God restores each individual to the point where there is sufficient ability to believe” (69). This argument attempts to counter total depravity by claiming that God creates a spark of goodness within people sufficient to allow them to choose salvation. Prevenient grace, however, fails to address passages like Romans 8:5–8,
For those who are according to the flesh set their minds on the things of the flesh, but those who are according to the Spirit, the things of the Spirit. For the mind set on the flesh is death, but the mind set on the Spirit is life and peace, because the mind set on the flesh is hostile toward God; for it does not subject itself to the law of God, for it is not even able to do so, and those who are in the flesh cannot please God.
15 In a similar vein, Paul says in Ephesians 2:1, “And you were dead in your trespasses and sins.” Nowhere does Paul hint that an unbeliever has any life on his own merit or apart from Christ. We were born into sin.
16 John MacArthur, The MacArthur Study Bible (Nashville, Tenn.: Thomas Nelson Inc., 2006) 1668.
18 One may ask, “If God chooses some to salvation, then why am I condemned if He did not choose me?” “Why does God still judge me if I cannot help my actions?” The Apostle Paul answers this question in Romans 9:20-21, “On the contrary, who are you, O man, who answers to God? The thing molded will not say to the molder, ‘Why did you make me like this,’ will it? Or does not the potter have a right over the clay, to make from the same lump one vessel for honorable use and another for common use?’”
This may sound cruel and harsh but it is the answer we have been given in Scripture. It is the same answer the Lord gave Job in Job 38:2. When Job questioned God about his suffering, God said, “Who is this that darkens counsel by words without knowledge?” In other words, man has no right to question God. He may ask questions about God, but he has no right to question God. He does not have enough information with which to do so.
19 Baker’s Dictionary of Theology, ed. by Everett F. Harrison (Grand Rapids: Baker Book House, 1960) 109.
20 Bruce R. Reichenbach in The Grace of God, The Will of Man, 286.
22 Paul develops this thought further in Romans 7:14, “For we know that the Law is spiritual, but I am of flesh, sold into bondage to sin.”
23 Stephen Charnock, Discourses Upon the Existence and Attributes of God, vol. 2 (Grand Rapids: Baker Book House, 1979) 450. This redefining is done to prove God “just” in His dealings with man. But God does not need this “justification” for His actions:
But what if the foreknowledge of God, and the liberty of the will cannot be reconciled by man? Shall we therefore deny a perfection in God to support a liberty in ourselves? Shall we rather fasten ignorance upon God, and accuse Him of blindness to maintain our liberty (450)?
24 At this juncture, we must not allow our sense of justice to surpass the Bible’s sense of justice. Saying that “man has a responsibility for what he chooses to do” while “God is the one who ultimately chooses,” may seem unfair at first – especially for those who have not been chosen by God. However, Romans 1:18–20 says that God has revealed Himself to all men and that all men are without excuse regarding their rejection of salvation.
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