The Real Issue in the Debate on Predestination (Calvinism vs Arminianism)
One day a while ago I found out that one of my friends’ daughters had tried to commit suicide. Thankfully she failed. That same day, after learning the news, I went to consult my devotional when it was prayer time. You would not believe the topic: Jesus raising the little girl back from death (Mark 5, and other gospels). I shared the page of the devotional with my friend, and I believe God was glorified in that moment of fellowship and mutual marveling at His usual poetic timing. My friend’s daughter thankfully recovered and has gotten closer to Jesus since.
“What are the odds?” I’d say to myself many, many times after that event as I thought about it. Indeed it brought to mind many such events in my own life. Impeccably timed and executed happenings that, altogether, defy the modern day notion that there is randomness and that we are the sovereign determiners of our reality just flowing through a chaotic unfolding of events through our free choices. I am sure you have had these kinds of experiences too, and the point is that God has seamlessly choreographed all of these intertwining paths in a perfect way through His perfect genius, leaving no room for error or for things to be too early or too late.
These types of events are a source of profound mystery and awe, penetrating to the heart and making one question everything we have been told about how reality actually works.
This brings me to the hotly debated topic of predestination. Many people today like the idea of a sovereign God that works all things for the good just as the bible says in Romans 8:28. It’s true, but the sovereignty of God comes as a full package. If we accept God’s utter and total sovereignty over reality as the uncreated, eternal Creator of reality — then many of the things we have been taught to believe about who we are and what we do immediately come into conflict. This is why predestination is such a hot topic today. It is in total opposition to the libertarian philosophy of the Enlightenment and French Revolution values which the Western World operates by.
But the bible reminds us that friendship with the world is enmity with God, (James 4:4) and those who know their history as well as the bible will agree with the book of Ecclesiastes that there is “nothing new under the sun.” (Ecclesiastes 1:9) From the beginning of time Satan peddled the lie that man can be sovereign over his reality, to be like God knowing what is good and what is evil. This of course came at the ultimate price of foregoing a relationship with the source of all life which is what the devil wanted. Throughout history this lie has taken many forms, but its core principles have never really changed. In the Enlightenment and French Revolution, the world saw the birth of things like Theosophy, the Illuminati, secret societies, the New Age movement and many other things which ultimately are all satanic in nature.
One also cannot ignore the sinister influence of the Jesuits and the Counter Reformation on history and modern Protestant beliefs. Charismatic Christianity, the NAR movement, dispensationalism and futurism, Hollywood, communism, Zionism, Islam and many other things all trace back to the Catholic Church and its military wing of the Jesuits in some shape or fashion. In fact we are still in the Counter Reformation, and will be until Protestantism has been completely eradicated or absorbed back into the Mother Church, but I digress.
Without diving headlong into some endless rabbit holes, the point is that the bible is true when it says the devil is the god of this age. Mankind has always been sold the idea of individual sovereignty one way or another and today this message is at an all-time maximum because the end is near. This is why the truth of the gospel, which testifies of a completely sovereign God, is at constant odds with culture. There is no room for individual sovereignty in a reality where we are created as vessels for the will and intents of a perfect, completely sovereign being. This upsets people because rebellion to authority in our modern culture has been elevated as a virtue, and submission or humility associated to weakness.
Unfortunately Christianity is not immune to the influences of culture. Certainly the modern landscape testifies of this, and we know the bible has talked about wolves in sheep’s clothing, false prophets, false teachers and teachings, false converts and apostasies since the very beginning. History is rife with examples of these things, and in today’s faithful ranks of Christians we see the influence of this pervasive, ancient lie through debates on things like predestination and its role in salvation.
Probably one of the most controversial topics in Christian theology, the teaching of predestination is one that countless people debate over regardless of their denomination. Although most who hold a position in favor of predestination fall under the “Reformed” bracket of Protestant theology, the notion that God is completely sovereign and predestines things is as old as the bible. The people who wrote the scriptures, long before things like the French Revolution and Enlightenment, universally believed in a sovereign God who predetermined events and was in total control of both the good things and the bad things that happened.
These truths create a kneejerk reaction for most people because of the problem of evil. That is, how can God predestine evil things to happen if He’s a loving God? Even more inflaming is the question of, How can God predestine people to hell if He’s a loving God? Although both of these topics are excellent topics to discuss and debate, unfortunately they also don’t get at the heart of the matter — which is what I want to share with you today. I will say this though: Acts 4:26–28 reminds us that the most evil thing in history (mankind torturing, shaming and murdering its Creator) was predestined, and we as Christians are being conformed to Christ’s image. Evil has a distinct and powerful purpose in this life and that is exactly why Romans 8:28 is so meaningful, that God works all the (necessary) evil that had to happen in this life for the good — just like He worked the most evil thing in history for the highest good possible.
Another quick thing I will say is that hell is not a place of eternal torment but rather a future place of final judgment. This, too, is a topic of great contention and will not be on our radar today. Nevertheless, one major issue people stumble over in the discussion of predestination is the idea that God predestined people for eternal damnation and suffering. This is not what the bible teaches and certainly not what the writers of the bible believed because Hebrews were unique to their pagan counterparts in their views on the afterlife. The former believed in a body-soul union, while the latter believed in an immortal soul that persisted after death. Because Greek philosophy invaded the church in the first few centuries through many church fathers such as Augustine, Origen and Clement, these ideas fused into the Christian tradition along with other pagan beliefs long ago.
Despite these kinds of topics being very tempting, I want to encourage you to resist the urge to drift into them and instead focus on the heart of the issue. That heart is not whether God is just as a judge if He predestines to save some people and passes over others, or whether people go to hell for eternity or are simply destroyed at the end of time after being resurrected.
These things are distractions for us today because they pull the discussion into endless philosophical gymnastics with convincing arguments on both sides.
Rather, the heart of the matter is this: Does God do the work of salvation from end to end or do we do part of that work too? This is it, right here. This is the core of the discussion on predestination, and as I hope to show you today — it doesn’t have to be as needlessly complicated as people make it out to be. The only question is if we humbly accept the consequences of the truth or persist in error for the sake of what we’ve been taught by the world.
Some quick theological terms are as follows: monergism and synergism. Monergism refers to the idea that God works salvation without the cooperation of the individual, while synergism is the idea that salvation happens as a product of the individual choosing to have faith freely and God responding to that faith with grace. Although on face value it may seem to most people that these two perspectives are just splitting hairs, the reality is that they have vastly different consequences. As you will soon see, what you believe in regards to these things can significantly affect your relationship to God and your understanding of the gospel.
Most people today believe that the debate over predestination is a matter of being a “Calvinist” or an “Arminian.” These words refer to Protestant leaders John Calvin and Jacobus Arminius, respectively, who were very influential in shaping the theology of their time during the 16th century. Although the common understanding is that Calvinists believe in predestination and Arminians believe in freewill, the truth is that it is much more nuanced than that. In the Arminian Articles of 1610(1) it is evident that Arminius taught a view of predestination. In other words, the man Arminianism is named after was not a true synergist but very much believed in some form of predestination — specifically that God had predetermined in a general way that anyone who would believe in Jesus would be saved. Arminius also believed in a version of total depravity, that man cannot make the first move toward God because of being born in sin and in a sinful world.
Unfortunately the difference between these two perspectives is a little more complex than splitting hairs over how exactly God predetermines reality. What started as a local reform movement in the churches of Holland between two parties eventually changed the thinking of the modern Church as a whole, especially since a century later the world saw the Enlightenment, the French Revolution, Charles Darwin and so many other things I mentioned previously.
Although many people believe Arminianism is a response to the staunchness of Calvinism, or specifically the “5 points” of Calvinism (the 5 main tenets or teachings), the truth is the exact opposite. In 1610, when the Arminian Articles were published, the group who followed Arminius (who had passed away by that time) essentially protested the theology and thinking of their church and wanted reform, proposing 5 points of protest in regards to the sovereignty of God, salvation, the workings of grace, the nature of faith and the scope of the atonement.(2)
In response to this protest, the Synod of Dort was held in 1618 to review and address the claims of Arminius and his followers. The result was that the synod rejected the Arminian teachings as heretical, and felt that clarification of true teaching was warranted. Hence, in response to the 5 main points of Arminianism, the 5 points of Calvinism were born.(3)(4) Often placed in the acronym, “TULIP,” these points are: total depravity, unconditional election, limited atonement, irresistible grace and perseverance of the saints.
This topic is an expansive one and it is easy to get lost in various philosophical arguments on each of these points. Our goal today will be to drive at the heart of the matter and expand from there.
Nevertheless, most people do not know their history or the evolution of various beliefs over the ages and where they come from, which has led to confusion as time moved forward. Within Calvinist circles today you have people who are “3 point” or “4 point” Calvinists (meaning they reject certain tenets but accept others) and within Arminianism you have those who align with the more conservative beliefs of Jacobus Arminius and also those who have strayed well into various forms of Pelagianism. For reference, Pelagius was a 5th century heretic who taught the inherent goodness of man and the sovereignty of the human will. Sound familiar? There is nothing new under the sun.
Our goal here will be to address the source of this debate and examine it step by step to come to a simple conclusion. Instead of getting lost in philosophy or biblical gymnastics, we are going to answer the question that underpins everything else: Is God completely and sovereignly in control of salvation or does He share that outcome with mankind in some way because of freewill? As complex and endless as this debate may seem, my goal today will be to show you that in fact the answer is quite simple if we are honest with ourselves and with what the bible says.
So then, we begin in the place where any good adventure begins: with a question. Does God do the work of salvation, or do both God and man do the work in some way? The answers to this question, and there are only two possible, lead us to the truth through diligent inquiry. If God is the only one that does the work then He is the only one that gets the credit and glory for the result. Makes sense, right? An important point now arises: it is a fact of history that most people will not be saved when it is all said and done, so what does this mean? It means that the only way to explain history is that God must have chosen some people to be saved and others which He passed over.
If God alone does the work of salvation then He alone is the only factor in someone being saved. Most people have not been saved, so that means God obviously made a conscious choice to choose some and not others. In other words, the countless people in hell will not be in hell because of their choices but rather because of God’s choice on whether to give them a new heart or not. Here many people stumble because they think God to be unfair for playing favorites, but a few simple biblical reminders set the record straight.
First and foremost, the cross was predestined before the foundation of the world. (Revelation 13:8) Predestination does not work selectively, reality is either predestined or it is not. You cannot have a reality with partially predestined things just like you can’t be “halfway pregnant.” Everything is related to everything, and what that means is that if one thing is predestined they all are, regardless of uncomfortable that makes us feel or how many new questions it brings forth. We must also remember that the bible is a prophetic book and prophecy means that things were predetermined beforehand, not in a general sense but in a very specific one.
Why all of this is important is the following. Whatever choosing God did in regards to who would be saved and who wouldn’t was all done before the world was created. Because there was nothing before the world was created that means His election (choice) was unconditional. Think about it. Only God, who exists outside of the conditions of time and space can make a truly free and unconditional choice. We as created beings are slaves to the momentum of our lives and the world around us. Our choices are always, without a doubt, conditional upon what came before and what will come afterward. This is the first and most important point to remember. Our will is not like God’s will, and that means that our choices are not like His. Indeed, the bible reminds us that His ways are not like our ways in Isaiah 55:8 and that it was He who declared the end from the beginning in Isaiah 46:10.
But now if God and man both do the work somehow we have a vastly different reality. There are certainly many ways to break this down, but in the end it all amounts to the same conclusion. Both share in the credit and glory of the result. After all, if most people in history statistically will not be saved, then those who were able to do something different than the majority — even if that something different was just having faith to make the first move or keep their salvation — these rare individuals must have had something special within themselves. That extra grit, that extra bit of will power or wisdom or courage or whatever else. It really doesn’t matter, because in the end they avoided the worst consequence possible and obtained the best reward possible where most people failed. God offered salvation, and maybe even helped depending on which version of Arminianism you partake of, but these fortunate few deserve at least some of the credit and glory for the unbelievable act of faith they had in a world that was largely faithless.
I hope that you see the problem here. Normally at this point in the debate, the topic of faith being a work or not will come up and that is yet another endless rabbit hole of biblical gymnastics. You can spend hours entertaining arguments from both sides on whether faith is truly a work or not, but that doesn’t get you to the heart of the matter. If God does everything to save you and keep you saved then He gets credit for the outcome in a reality where most people were not saved. If however you contribute to any part of that outcome, regardless of how small, you cannot avoid robbing glory from God because the vast majority of people just like you didn’t figure it out. This inevitably makes you special and better than those people regardless of what we say or think about faith being a work or not. It robs full credit and glory from God and we know that God does not share His glory with anyone. (Isaiah 42:8)
Another important point worth mentioning is that nobody deserves anything from God. We are all born into a world of sin and by the time we are even aware God exists or the gospel is presented to us we have accumulated countless sins and are deserving of the death penalty. This is the curse of sin, and why the bible says the heart is desperately wicked (Jeremiah 17:9) and that nobody seeks after God naturally (Psalm 14:1–3)(1 Corinthians 2:14). This is our total depravity, a point on which Arminius and Calvin both agreed on for the most part.
So then if this is the case, why is God unfair for choosing some to be saved and leaving others? As long as we believe that man can somehow counteract what the bible says about his fallen nature and make a different choice, we will interpret predestination and election incorrectly. We will think that God chose some and unfairly passed over others even though, somehow, they would have been able to choose faith had God not oppressed and blocked them through His predestined choice. This is wrong for many reasons, but the most prominent is a misunderstanding of total depravity.
An object in motion stays in motion unless acted upon by an external force. This is Newton’s first law and it governs our physical reality. Interestingly the physical also points to the spiritual, and in this sense we are the object and the motion is sin. Without the irresistible force of God’s grace changing our direction we would remain on a path that leads to certain death. This is what the bible teaches, and what it means is that God choosing to save some and not others is not unfair or unjust but rather merciful. God did not have to bring into existence anything, and certainly doesn’t owe anyone salvation. Rather, everyone was doomed because of sin and God’s choice to redeem some out of the fire is a show of His grace and mercy, and therefore a source of glory for Him forever and ever. Amen.
It is here that we are again tempted to swerve into another related debate. The objection might sound something like this, “But then why did God predestine some to save and others to die?” or “Why didn’t God just predestine to save everyone?” This goes back to the problem of evil, which we struggle with in today’s culture because we have lost appreciation for the total sovereignty of God. We will not entertain this debate here, but I will again say this: all evil has a purpose in this life. Just as Joseph recognized the purpose God intended for the evil his brothers committed upon him in his youth, (Genesis 50:20) so too can we rest assured that the many things we do not have an explanation for will serve God’s purposes perfectly to reveal both His justice and His mercy in history.
In the end it’s all about trust, and trust happens even when you don’t have all the answers.
Now, the next logical conclusion if God does the full work of salvation is that God does not do shoddy work. This part is also very important. Scripture reminds us that what God intends to do He always fulfills, (Isaiah 46:11) and that God does not change His mind or have regret about His choices. (Numbers 23:19)(1 Samuel 15:29) This may seem to be in conflict to situations like the flood, where God said that He regretted making mankind, but again we must be cautious with reading our modern libertarian values into writing that is over 3,000 years old.
God experiencing time and space as He predetermined it is not the same as God making a decision and then realizing it was a poor decision. God is incapable of making poor decisions, and we can understand these moments better through the lens of the needed disciplining that comes with children or pets. You know that when you have a child or a pet you will have to discipline them. It is predetermined, and when that moment comes you certainly don’t enjoy it. Therefore you can simultaneously have a predetermined outcome that you will experience with regret. If this applies to us as creations, how much more does it apply to an infinite God who’s ways are not like our ways? Back to the point at hand.
If God does the full work, and God completes all that He does without fail, what this means for us as believers is that we have eternal security in our salvation because He will persevere our faith. That means in your darkest hours and challenges, the hope and promise is that God will not let you go through the sanctifying work of the Holy Spirit who is conforming you to the image of Christ. Put simply, a believer of the gospel has trust in their salvation never being lost or ripped away from them because of their failures or ups and downs. A genuine believer is regenerated and regeneration cannot be undone because it is God’s perfect work.
Yet in the Arminian view, regardless of the various positions, the consistent thread is that faith of the believer precedes regeneration. This is a very important point. Man exercises faith and then gets regenerated, as opposed to God regenerating man and then the ability to believe happens as a result. What this means practically is that one can also lose their salvation and does not have eternal security because maintaining their salvation is not ultimately God’s responsibility but their own. In other words, the same way that people get saved (freewill) is the same way they can get un-saved.
Although there is a sliding scale of what people believe in this area, what it tends toward is a works-based view of salvation. Catholicism is the easiest example because Catholicism is synergistic. One must maintain their salvation with various works like sacraments and acts of charity, otherwise they may lose their salvation and suffer eternal damnation. The motive is not delight and assurance in God’s grace, perfect promise and or character, but rather fear of being punished, inevitably enslaving one to religion rather than entrancing them in a relationship with the living God.
Arminianism therefore does not provide eternal security, which is at the heart of the gospel. It is my strong belief that the countless martyrs in history gave their lives because they had eternal security and trusted the word of He who is faithful. If the gospel cannot provide eternal security in a world where no such security in anything exists, then it is no different than the world. If we could lose your salvation — the reality is that we would. Many will counter with the classic example of Judas as proof that one can lose their salvation, but the truth is much more complex and, again, not something on our radar today because it distracts from the point.
I will say a few things about Judas though. Christ said that all that the Father gives Him will come to Him (John 6:37). This point is echoed again in John 10:27–30 where He says that His Father gave Him His sheep and that nobody can take them out of His hands. Later in John 17:12 Jesus prays to the Father and says that He has indeed kept all the ones that were given to Him, except for Judas so that the scriptures would be fulfilled. The point here is that Judas was never regenerated but actually a false convert. Why? Because the Father never chose to give Judas to Christ as one of His sheep in the first place. The New Testament is full of warnings against false converts, and many parables deal with this topic, (like the parable of the sower or the foolish virgins) with Judas being perhaps the best example of them all.
So now we see so far a two-fold cost to Arminian philosophy, and indeed it is philosophy because Arminians use philosophy rather than scripture to argue against a completely sovereign God. Nevertheless, if God does all the work then He receives all the glory and we receive all the joy and peace just as it should be and just as it is. But if we dare to ascribe any part of that outcome to ourselves, no matter how little or seemingly benign, we immediately rob glory from God and rob peace and joy from ourselves because there is no eternal security in our freewill.
The gospel is a testimony of God’s perfect work unfolding in our lives. If God has chosen you to be regenerated there will come a day when you will see the words of the gospel as the truth and do the impossible which is to believe. Those who come and go are not true believers, because once you truly see God there is no turning back from His glory, His beauty and His power. The notion that we must respect human sovereignty through free will is not only unbiblical, it is destructive to our sense of peace and delight in the gift we’ve been given through the gospel.
The truth testifies against man’s ability to do anything for himself, and certainly both Calvin and Arminius agreed, yet in practice Arminianism robs glory from God and peace from the believer because of the aforementioned attitudes. Yet another thing it does is set man higher than he deserves because of its view of total depravity (or lackthereof). Although there are several variations within Arminianism, in practice they all lead to the same effect. If God does all the work, that means we are incapable of doing any work and need to be saved. It also means that His grace is not just an offer that we in turn take advantage of through our free will, but rather an overpowering and irresistible force because it is connected to and is an expression of His will. Remember that God accomplishes all that He chooses to do, and in this sense grace is not something that can be rejected because it is God’s choice to redeem someone completely and fully. To believe otherwise elevates man above God in power over the outcome and makes God powerless to save those He has chosen to save.
Yet this is the futile logic that Arminianism boils down to. In trying to honor man by preserving some level of sovereignty through free will, Arminian philosophy reduces God to a polite friend who, although capable of creating the universe from His words alone, will not dare to offend you by superseding your sovereign free will with His offer of grace. Sure, He may help, as in the belief of “prevenient grace” (that is, grace allows people to choose by somewhat canceling total depravity, which in and of itself is a philosophical quagmire of contradictory beliefs),(5) but in the end the onus and responsibility is with the believer because otherwise it wouldn’t be fair or authentic otherwise.
We must again refuse the temptation to drift into endless side-debates on these issues. Does God do the work or do man and God share in the work of salvation? If God does the work then He gets credit and glory, we get peace and joy and the work can never be destroyed because God completes what He does. If we contribute to this outcome, regardless of how small a contribution, it leads to disaster. God is no longer completely glorified, we no longer have absolute peace and joy and Satan has a door to enter both in pulling us toward legalism as well as self-elevation.
If mankind is incapable of doing anything for himself in terms of salvation, which is what the bible clearly teaches, then we see ourselves rightly as dead in our sins needing God’s grace to live. If we are dead then we cannot make any choices, which is why the bible uses this illustration several times. But if there is any shred of capability in man to make the right choice, then man is not completely incapable and there must be something good inherently inside of him. How much of that good exists depends on where in the spectrum of Arminianism one finds themselves, yet nonetheless that it exists in whatever form elevates man outside of his total depravity and opens the door for pride and the lie from the garden in all of its various flavors and forms.
I know many who have fallen away because of this exact issue. They bought into the belief that there is some inherent goodness in mankind and that we are capable of making the right choice. Two close examples are an atheist who used to be a missionary and a New Age gnostic who used to build churches and lead bible studies. In both cases they were deceived by the free will illusion and its worldly attitudes. This is not to say that Calvinists don’t fall away, but the point is that a door is opened for the enemy when we do not see God, and ourselves, rightly as the bible teaches.
The gospel is called the power of God unto salvation in Romans 1:16, and God prophesied that He would write the law on our hearts and make us obey in Ezekiel 11:19. If we take offense to the latter we will not understand the former properly. To be conformed to the perfect image of Christ is the best possible outcome we could ever experience. Obedience to God means maximal joy, life and meaning — and if that obedience is facilitated by an irresistible, supernatural work of God then it shows God’s mercy and love not His unfairness or our inauthenticity.
God is not called the God of Salvation throughout the bible because He simply offers salvation, but rather because He completes it. Arminian philosophy does not see the gospel rightly because it fundamentally denies its sovereign power by maintaining the free will of man as a component in salvation. The problem is that, in the process, God is also put into a box as well. The moment we try to draw a line between where God’s power ends and our free will begins we inevitably put God into a box.
It doesn’t matter how big that box is, that there is a box in the first place is a huge problem.
This is easily avoided by submitting ourselves to what scripture plainly teaches about a sovereign God who accomplishes all that He wants, including salvation. Unfortunately, the only consistent understanding of God for the Arminian position is an open-theist understanding, and that is why philosophy — much more than solid scripture — is used to underpin and justify Arminian argumentation. But a completely sovereign God destroys any notion that we have any part to play in our salvation outside of receiving it with joy and humility and awe, and participating in it daily through prayer and courage.
With all of this said we come to the final and probably most contested issue, which is the nature of the atonement. If we are to take a monergist position, then Christ came to atone for those God had chosen to save before the foundation of the world (unconditionally, mind you) and that atonement was therefore a success. We know the Father chose to give a people to His Son, and that the Holy Spirit sanctifies and seals those people. The Godhead is in unity and the work on the cross was a complete success because all of those who God has chosen to be saved will benefit from it.
Yet in the Arminian view things are not so clear. Arminianism believes that God wants to save everyone in history, and that Christ died for everyone in history. God predestined the gospel, in the sense that people could be saved by it, but who ends up believing is ultimately a factor of freewill at some point in process depending on where one stands with these issues. This is problematic for several reasons, the first and foremost is that it creates disharmony in the triune Godhead.
It is clear from passages mentioned previously, like John 6:37, John 10:27–30 and John 17:12 that the Father chose to give certain people to Christ and others He passed over, like Judas, so that things might be fulfilled. Again, evil has a clear purpose in this reality and if we stumble against that then the truth of these things will be hidden from our eyes. We also know that the Spirit seals believers, sanctifies them and is a guarantee of their inheritance with Christ. (Ephesians 1:14) But if this is the case, then how can Christ die for everyone in history? Do you see the problems here?
God the Father clearly has an electing purpose with those who He chose to give to Christ. The Holy Spirit is given as the guarantee to those people, which returns us to the previous points: how can anyone lose their salvation and effectively undo the work and guarantee with their free will? It is not possible, yet this is what Arminianism teaches. Even worse is the disharmony of the Godhead if Christ came to die for everyone in history. This means that, despite the Father only choosing some for Him and the Spirit sealing and guaranteeing those people — Christ decided to do something different and die for everyone instead.
Doing so violates the economy of subordination to the Father that we see throughout the bible and also creates an even bigger problem: the work on the cross was not successful in achieving what God wanted most. In other words, if God wants everyone to be saved, then the truth of history testifies against His efforts at accomplishing His goals. May God forgive my writing as I try to convey the utter foolishness of this perspective. If God chooses and works, then the atonement accomplished everything He set out to accomplish. Those who have been chosen to be saved will be saved and come to the knowledge of the cross. This is very straightforward.
Yet if God wanted everyone to be saved then the cross did not accomplish this goal. Most people in history are not saved, so what does this say about God? Certainly not what the bible says, that He accomplishes everything He sets out to do. And certainly not that God is of one mind despite being three persons, because in this disjointed view of the atonement Christ acts differently from the actions of His Father which is impossible. What does it say if Christ, knowing omnisciently who would reject Him, still chose to die and endure the shame for such wicked people? What does it say to the Father if, despite being given a people to redeem He would instead die for those the Father did not choose?
We must not get caught up in emotions when dealing with these crucial topics. The teaching of limited atonement is better understood therefore as “Completed Atonement.” In other words, the work on the cross was complete and perfect because it provided for all those who the Father had chosen throughout history to be redeemed. God desires all of those (He has chosen) to come to the knowledge of His Son so that the revelation of the glory of God will be complete, and it will be because it has been predestined just like the cross. Anything that deviates from this understanding leads to serious misalignments in our view of God, the Godhead and the gospel.
Final Thoughts
The real issue in the Calvinist vs Arminian debate is whether monergism is true or not. If it is true then all five points of the Calvinist rebuttal to the Arminian heresy in the 17th century stand firm. Monergism is an absolute, whereas synergism is a spectrum. Nevertheless synergism in practice regardless of where you stand leads to the same traps because it undermines the power of God to achieve what He wants to achieve, ignores the weight of evidence against a sovereign will of man and ultimately puts God in a box by delineating areas that He doesn’t have control over.
If you believe that God does all the work of salvation then He is the one who gets 100% of the credit and glory, and in turn you receive 100% of the peace and joy that are so unique to the gospel. If you believe that you have any part in the process, then immediately the devil has a doorway into your mind that he can use to pull you either to the right or to the left, either toward legalism or toward progressivism. Humility is threatened and so is your joy and peace in an eternal security at God’s hands by the guarantee of the Holy Spirit as your inheritance. You cannot lose a guarantee, let alone a guarantee from the only being in the universe that can provide a guarantee.
All of the writers of the bible were monergistic. In old times even the lots people cast into their lap were attributed to God’s control (Proverbs 16:33) and Christ said there is not a single sparrow that falls without Him knowing about it. (Matthew 10:29) For thousands of years these attitudes were fairly consistent. Yet the lie from the garden has persisted and entered more and more into the Church over the centuries. It began with the Greeks and Gnostics, it continued with the Catholic Church, then we saw the Arminians and now we see Progressive liberal Christians.
There is nothing new under the sun, and all of these groups have something in common with pagan religions, Judaism, Islam and sects such as Mormonism, Jehovah's Witnesses and even the New Age. All of them believe in freewill as the factor to some degree. We must see that the gospel is unique in history because it is a testimony of God doing the work, standing firm on the scriptures as a relaying of not only His love and mercy, but of His absolute sovereignty over all things good and evil. Within that understanding there is a necessity of trust, yet the reassurance we have is that this trust is not of our own doing but rather a product of the irresistible, unfolding, active, living and powerful supernatural work of God in our lives through grace. This is the true gospel and the truth is what sets us free.
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