TPW #4 | What Arminians Really Believe - From the Words of Real Arminians - Introduction

Paul warns that evil men and imposters will grow worse and worse, deceiving one another and being deceived. The reason Paul told Timothy that was because he needed to be ready to spend the balance of his life in uninterrupted warfare for the truth.

The most dangerous people alive today are always, always, always ordained ministers. They're the most dangerous people in the world, especially the ones that people think are Christians who will sell you theological poison to the damnation of your soul.

Folks, I just want to warn you about something. Every heretic in the entire history of the church, without exception, has taught their heresy in the name of being faithful to Scripture. What happened when Jesus was nailed to the cross?

That was the day of wrath. That was the day of judgment. That is the day of final salvation, brought back in time and applied to us once for all at the moment of our effectual calling when we repent and believe and are united to Christ.

Historical Arminianism and the Synod of Dort

Welcome to the Protestant Witness. I'm your host, Pastor Patrick Hines of Bridwell Heights Presbyterian Church in Kingsport, Tennessee. Today is another installment of the series on historical Arminianism.

We're going to read through an article written by an Arminian theologian, J. Kenneth Greider, in the Evangelical Dictionary of Theology called Arminianism. That's the title of the entry in that dictionary.

And I think it's going to surprise some people when they find out what Arminianism historically is all about. I have found this term Arminianism to be among the most misunderstood terms used by Christians today.

So I hope that you will find this to be helpful and enlightening. If you look back in the archives of my YouTube channel here, one of the first things I tried to do was I tried to do a discussion of what real historical Arminianism is.

And what it was that the Reformed churches there in the Netherlands were responding to at the Council or the Synod of Dort from 1618 to 1619 that met, where the so-called Five Points of Calvinism were codified in their response to the five protestations of the Arminian remonstrance.

And those videos have been viewed a number of times. I've had a lot of folks contact me and say, you need to keep going with that. So I'm going to start over and do a study of what is Arminianism? What is Arminianism today?

So often you hear people, you know, I'm a Calvinist, I'm an Arminian. What does that really mean? I think most people today who use the word Arminian really have no idea what an Arminian is historically.

And so in this first video, before we start going through the Council, the Synod of Dort, we're also going to look at John Miley, who was an Arminian theologian, and look at some of B .B. Warfield's criticisms of Miley, and also look at some of Miley's statements about the complete inconsistency of Arminianism with the Reformation.

Miley himself tells us that, that this is not consistent, that his views are not consistent with the evangelical principles, what is the term that he likes to use. So we're going to look at those things.

But in this first video, I just wanted to look at an article that is in the Evangelical Dictionary of Theology, written by an Arminian scholar named J. Kenneth Greider. He was a Nazarene Christian theologian and former seminary professor primarily associated with the followers of John Wesley, who are part of the Holiness Movement.

He was a member of the Church of the Nazarene. He graduated from the Nazarene Theological Seminary in 1947, received his PhD from the University of Glasgow in 1952, and he wrote a book called, it's kind of his magnum opus, A Wesleyan Holiness Theology.

I have the book, I have not read it, but I have got that because I wanted to hear how Greider himself puts all this together. But he wrote an excellent article summarizing his views, summarizing his views in the Evangelical Dictionary of Theology, and I wanted to work through that because years ago I read this, and I was directed to it by reading the Systematic Theology of Robert Raymond.

And I think there's some things in this article on Arminianism, and keep in mind, this is no Southern Baptist guy in the pews. This is an Arminian theologian who wrote this article, and I think y 'all need to listen carefully to what he's saying.

This is under the heading, Arminianism, in the Evangelical Dictionary of Theology, which is a Baker, one of the books in the Baker Reference Library. Edited by Walter Elwell, who was the editor of the book.

It's a massive book. I got the Kindle version, but the huge hardback version is over on my shelf over there, weighs like 20 pounds. But anyway, listen to the way this Arminian theologian defines Arminianism.

Listen.

The theological stance of James Arminius and the movement that stemmed from him. That's what Arminianism is. OK, so it is the stance of Arminius and the movement that stems from him. It views Christian doctrine much as the pre-Augustinian fathers and John Wesley did.

In several basic ways, it differs from the Augustan Luther Calvin tradition. This form of Protestantism arose in the United Netherlands shortly after the alteration from Roman Catholicism had occurred in that country.

It stresses scripture alone as the highest authority for doctrines, and it teaches that justification is by grace alone. There being no meritoriousness in our faith that occasions justification, since it is only through prevenient grace that fallen humanity can exercise that faith.

OK, just by the way, we'll be talking about prevenient grace. What is prevenient grace? Let me give you the nugget of what that's about. Whenever Arminians get in trouble with Reformed people like me or others that point out that they're basically being Pelagian or semi-Pelagian in their perspective, prevenient grace is a word they'll throw in there to try to get around our criticisms of them.

What I've pointed out, what I had to point out to actually a guy that I was listening to me preach on the radio. We have a radio program every Sunday morning. He didn't like what I was saying because in my sermons on Romans, I pointed out that Arminianism and Roman Catholicism are identical to one another.

I said in a sermon, I've said in numerous sermons, what is Arminianism? It's Roman Catholicism without a pope and some extra sacraments.

It really is. It really is.

It is the same exact identical system. I remember reading through from front to back the canons of the Council of Trent, the canons and decrees of the Council of Trent. Especially in the sections on justification and things relating to the Christian life, so much of what Trent was condemning, I agreed with them condemning it.

At the time, it wasn't Reformed then. I thought, why am I agreeing with what the Roman Catholic Church says about the Reformation instead of standing with my Protestant forefathers? Well, I didn't realize Arminianism has swallowed up most of Protestantism in our country.

And so it's important to recognize that prevenient grace is basically, well, we're saying that man couldn't believe without some kind of prior work of grace. But what's the problem with that? The decisive factor is still man.

And I told this guy that I met with, he invited me out to lunch and he gave me a book, Roger Olson's book, Arminian Theology, Myths and Realities, which I read from front to back. And I gave him the five points of Calvinism defined, documented, and defended by Thomas and Steele.

And the newer edition is bigger and it's got a bunch of really good essays at the end of it.

I gave him that.

And then we met again for lunch a month later. I had read his book. I was ready to discuss it. And he just handed my book back to me. He hadn't even opened it. Look, I suffered through this book and I'm ready to tell you how totally unbiblical all this stuff is.

He wouldn't even read mine.

Wouldn't even read the book I gave him. In fact, handed it back to me. So I found that to be somewhat typical, unfortunately. I don't have anything to lose from reading people I don't agree with. I do it all the time.

I think it's a good exercise to go through. But he wouldn't even discuss it. Wouldn't even discuss the book. Wouldn't even read it. So what is provenient grace? It's a term that's thrown out there to try to get them out from under the charge of being Pelagian or semi-Pelagian.

But the fact is, as I told this guy, look, I said there's two ways you can be semi-Pelagian. You can either believe that, well, the fall rendered us weak and really hurt us, but didn't completely extinguish the liberty of our will so that we can still choose for Christ.

Or you can say the fall did destroy man's will and destroy us and totally enslave us to sin. But God does this prevenient work of grace upon everybody to get them out of that disabled position so that they can then be the decisive factor using their free will.

I said it's six of one, half a dozen of the other. It's the same thing. Because what is the burden in both of those positions? To make sure that man is protected, that man's sovereignty is protected, that man's will is the decisive factor in salvation.

We don't care how you have to get there as long as you get there. If you have to say it's all made possible by grace, then fine. Say it's all possible by grace. But as I said, that's what the Roman Catholic Church taught, too.

And still teaches. And so that's why I've said from the pulpit many times, Arminianism is Roman Catholicism minus a pope and some extra sacraments. It's the same thing. It's the same system.

Okay.

Predestination, Foreknowledge, and Human Autonomy

Alright, so here, let's continue on with Greider. Arminianism is a distinct kind of Protestant theology for several reasons. He's quite right here. It's totally distinct. One of its distinctions is its teaching on predestination.

It teaches predestination, since the scripture writers do. But it understands that this pre-decision on God's part is to save the ones who repent and believe. Which really guts the Greek word praorizo from its meaning.

It's not, well, God predestined to save the ones who repent and believe. That's not the biblical usage of the word. When you look at the term in Romans 8, 28, 29, 30, and 31, those whom he predestined, the direct object of the word predestined, is individual humans.

It's not, he predestined to save those who would repent and believe. That really guts the word of its meaning. Completely. That is not the way the term is used in the New Testament when it comes to the salvation of sinners.

We are predestined, he predestined us unto adoption in Ephesians chapter 1, 3 through 11. He predestined us unto adoption. Who's the direct object of the verb? Us. Humans. People. It's not a predestined plan to save or anything like that.

So, it teaches that this predestination on God's part is to save the ones who repent and believe. Which is to say, we don't believe in predestination the way the Bible talks about it. Okay, listen, writer continues.

Since the predetermination of the destiny of individuals is based on God's foreknowledge of the way in which they will either freely reject Christ or freely accept him. In other words, we don't believe in predestination.

The term praorizo, to destine beforehand, to determine beforehand. To say that God foresees the way in which people will exercise their free will to either accept or reject Christ. Is to say that we aren't predestined, but rather that we destine ourselves by our own autonomous actions.

Also, I would point out, this destroys your doctrine of God. As soon as you start saying things like, God foresees who will choose him, now you have a real problem. Because you have God learning. Does God acquire knowledge?

Does he passively take in something? Does he look down the corridor of time and learn things that his free creatures will do and then react accordingly? That's pure nonsense. What you really need to do here is you need to ask yourself the question, does God know the future in exhaustive detail?

Now, Christians who read the Bible, who love the Bible, and submit to the Bible will say, of course, God knows the future in exhaustive detail. So what's the question then? How does he know it? There's only two answers to that question.

He either knows it because he learned it, or he knows it because he determines it. Now, if you're going to say that he knows the future because he learned it, then in the final analysis you have dualism.

You have something that is ultimate outside of God. Something to which he is subject. And that's why I've said on the pulpit many times, I've taught this, I've gone through the Westminster Confession, and I've gone into dozens and dozens and dozens of passages, and I've tried to point out the only consistent Arminian is an open theist.

You have to believe that God is finite. That there's something else that is as great as or greater than God that he is subject to. In his own creation, even. And then you'll get others. There's a guy that self-published a book that I actually met with him before he published it, and it's just a horrendous, horrible attack on Calvinism, on Reformed theology.

And he uses a phrase over and over again in the book. And it's just hilarious. I've shared this phrase with many people. He says, God has sovereignly delegated to man a measure of independent freedom.

I've read that quote at Men's Bible Studies, and I've asked, what's wrong with this statement? And everyone chuckles. And they all say immediately, it's self-contradictory. I said, yeah, but at least God is sovereignly not sovereign.

That's like saying God is omnisciently ignorant. He is omnipotently powerless. I mean, you can't put sovereignty in the same sentence with independent freedom. And they'll try to say God is so sovereign that he can delegate to man this independent freedom.

Or that Tozer quote that Leighton Flowers likes to use, that he'd be a God that's like that would be too scared to let anything happen outside his control. These are things that aren't even discussed in those categories in scripture.

But anyway, I am going to get through this article.

All right.

Thus its view is called conditional predestination, since the predetermination of the destiny of individuals is based on God's foreknowledge of the way in which they will either freely reject Christ or freely accept him.

The problem is when the term prognosco, foreknowledge, the noun, and then also foreknow, prognosco, the verb, when those things are used, especially the verb prognosco, what is foreknown? Individuals.

Not their actions.

That's the fatal flaw with the way that they're using the term there. Anyway, Grider continues. Arminius defended his view most precisely in his commentary on Romans 9, which he called an examination of Perkins' pamphlet and declaration of sentiments.

He argued against supralapsarianism, popularized by John Calvin's son-in-law and Arminius' teacher at Geneva, Theodor Beza, and vigorously defended at the University of Leiden by Francis Gomaras, a colleague of Arminius.

Now, if you're wondering, what is supralapsarianism? What is that whole controversy about? What is supralapsarianism and infralapsarianism? Let me just real quick explain that if you're not familiar with that.

Those two terms, supralapsarianism and infralapsarianism, where in the logical order of God's decrees do you put the decree of election? The decree where God chooses who he's going to save. Is it logically...

Okay, here's the decree that man would lapse into sin. That's where the word lapse comes from. It's the lapse into sin. Is God's decree of election supralapse? Does he choose who he's going to save here and then determines that they will fall?

Or does the fall happen first logically and then infralapsarian underneath here? Then you have God making his choice. Now, one of the arguments that infralapsarian people have used is to say, well, at least in our scheme you have God dealing with man as a sinner.

In a supralapsarian scheme, you have God dealing with the mass of humanity logically prior to when he's even decreed that man will fall into sin. So it's a very interesting discussion. Robert Raymond has a very helpful discussion of that in his systematic theology.

I'm not sure that that question really even can be biblically answered, to be honest with you, to be straightforward. But whatever position you hold, in the final analysis, God is the one who decides who he's going to save, who he's going to show mercy to, and who he's going to give justice and fairness to.

So ultimately it's God's decision. So anyway, this is where Arminius starts making his mark. Continuing with Greider, their view was that before the fall, indeed before the creation of humankind, God had already determined what the eternal destiny of each person was to be.

That's the supralapsarian. Before the fall, God already logically had determined who was going to be saved. Arminius also believed that the supralapsarian unconditional predestination view of Augustine and Luther was unscriptural.

This is the view that Adam's sin was freely chosen, but that after Adam's fall the eternal destiny of each person was determined by the absolutely sovereign God. In his Declaration of Sentiments, Arminius gave 20 arguments against supralapsarian, which he said, not quite correctly, applied also to sublapsarianism, or infralapsarianism.

For example, the view is void of good news, repugnant to God's wise, just, and good nature to human free nature, highly dishonorable to Jesus Christ, hurtful to the salvation of man, and inverts the order of the gospel of Jesus Christ, which is that we are justified after we believe, not prior to our believing.

Of course, the supralapsarians were not saying that, which is weird. He said the arguments all boil down to one. Unconditional predestination makes God the author of sin. And this is why the Westminster Standards in the Bible itself makes a differentiation between God as a primary cause and free agents, human beings acting as secondary causes.

All underneath the umbrella of God's determining decree of what's going to come to pass. But anyway, I don't want to get sidetracked by that. What I want you to see here is the consistent Arminian theologian's perspective.

Listen.

Human Freedom, Unlimited Atonement, and Conditional Security

Connected with Arminius' view of conditional predestination are other significant teachings of the quiet Dutchman. One is his emphasis on human freedom. Here, he was not Pelagian, as some think. He believes profoundly in original sin, understanding that the will of nature, of natural fallen humans, is not only maimed and wounded, but that it is entirely unable, apart from pervenient grace, to do any good thing.

Remember, like I said, there's two ways you can be semi-Pelagian. You can just deny that the fall really impacted man that way, or you can embrace what Scripture does say about the disabilities of man and sin, and then just throw in this concept of pervenient grace.

And God does this pervenient grace and gets everybody out of that condition so that they can use their free will to save themselves. Another teaching is that Christ's atonement is unlimited in its benefits.

He understood that such texts as he died for all meant what they say. That's a way of poisoning the well, because I believe they mean what they say too, but that's not what they mean. While Puritans, such as John Owen and other Calvinists, understood that all means only all those previously elected to be saved.

That's not how Owen or Calvinists understand that, but anyway. A third view is that while God is not willing that any should perish, the standard misinterpretation of 2 Peter 3 .9, if you can answer 2 Peter 3 .9, 1 Timothy 2 .4, and Matthew 23 .37, you can defeat, really, what all semi-Pelagians and Arminians say to this very day.

In Norman Geisler's book, Chosen but Free, it's sitting over there on my bookshelf, he quotes those three passages. Every time he comes across a verse of Scripture, Ephesians chapter 1, Romans 8 and 9, everything in Scripture, John 6, John 10, John 17, that teaches unconditional election, it's, well, 2 Peter 3 .9 says God wants all men to be saved, or he's not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance.

So it can't mean that. I mean, that literally is how he answers every passage of Scripture that teaches this. Well, because of the way I misunderstand 2 Peter 3 .9, it can't mean that. Anyway, a third view is that while God is not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance, which is a completely acontextual reading of 2 Peter 3 .9, saving grace is not irresistible, as in classical Calvinism.

It can be rejected. In Arminius' view, believers may lose their salvation and be eternally lost. Okay, here you have a guy, again, Grider is an Arminian theologian. He is being consistent. If a free will decision can get you in, it stands to reason that a free will decision can get you out at any time.

I mean, are these guys really saying that once a person believes in Jesus, they no longer have autonomous freedom from God anymore? So we have free will while we're unregenerate, but then when we're saved, we no longer have the ability to turn away from God?

Most of these guys, like in the Southern Baptist Convention, would say, no, no, no, eternal security, once saved, always saved, and yet the theologians of this cause recognize that you can't hold that view and be consistent.

Quoting as support of this position passages such as 2 Peter 1 .10,. Therefore, my brothers, be all the more eager to make your calling and election sure, for if you do these things, you will never fall.

Arminians still seek to nourish and encourage believers so that they might remain in a saved state. That's consistent. You get yourself saved and you keep yourself saved. While Arminians feel that they have been rather successful in disinclining many Calvinists from such views as unconditional election, limited atonement, and irresistible grace, they realize that they have not widely succeeded in the area of eternal security.

And there's a reason for that, because it doesn't fit your system. You can't have eternal security and have true autonomy from God in the ultimate sense. You just can't. R .T. Shank's Life in the Sun and H .O. Wiley's three-volume Christian Theology make a good scriptural case against eternal security from within the Arminian tradition, but the position has been unconvincing to Calvinists generally.

The Governmental Theory of the Atonement

Now, this is the paragraph that you really need to pay attention to. Listen carefully to what Greider says here. Those of you who wear the label Arminian, you need to hear this. He says, A spillover from Calvinism into Arminianism has occurred in recent decades.

Greider died in 2006, so I don't know what year he actually wrote this little article for the Evangelical Dictionary of Theology, but he's saying this is just in recent decades. So, historically, Arminians did not hold this.

Now, listen to what he says is a spillover. A spillover from Calvinism into Arminianism has occurred in recent decades. Many Arminians, whose theology is not very precise, say that Christ paid the penalty for our sins.

Yet such a view is foreign to Arminianism. Did you catch that? You hear that? Those of you who say, I'm not a Calvinist, I'm an Arminian, I believe in free will, you need to realize that if that's the position you're going to take, you cannot believe in a substitutionary atonement, a penal substitutionary atonement, a curse-bearing substitutionary atonement, where Christ has paid the penalty, where he bore our sins, 1 Peter 2 .24, Isaiah 53 .6, and the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all.

You can't believe that.

Listen to how he describes this. They say that Christ paid the penalty for our sins, yet such a view is foreign to Arminianism, which teaches instead that Christ suffered for us. Arminians teach that what Christ did, he did for every person.

Therefore, what he did could not have been to pay the penalty, since no one would then ever go into eternal perdition.

He's right.

You can't have a universal extent of the atonement and have it be a real, penal, legal, judicial, atoning sacrifice, because if Jesus actually, really, truly, and properly has satisfied divine justice in his death, for every human being that will ever live in the entire race of man from beginning to end of history, everybody's going to heaven, because there exists no legal ground for their condemnation, as Greider admits.

He said, well, if what he did was pay the penalty, and we say that what he did, he did for everyone, well, then no one could ever go to hell. And he's right about that.

Listen.

Arminianism teaches that Christ suffered for everyone so that the Father could forgive those who repent and believe.

You hear that?

So the cross doesn't actually save anybody. The cross makes all men savable if on other grounds, such as their works, their faith, their repentance, their perseverance, they meet God's demands, and thus effectively become their own saviors.

Listen to Greider. Listen to what he says here. Arminianism teaches that Christ suffered for everyone so that the Father could forgive those who repent and believe. His death is such that all will see that forgiveness is costly and will strive to cease from anarchy in the world that God governs.

This view is called the governmental theory of the atonement. So those of you who want to wear the label Arminian, you need to understand something. You can't tell people that Jesus died in the place of sinners on the cross as the penalty for their sins.

That view is, as Greider says, and he is quite right, historically, that view that Jesus paid the penalty for sin is foreign to Arminianism. It is not part of that system historically. And Greider makes the case.

He points out a fact. The idea that Christ paid the penalty for sin, that's a spillover from Calvinism into Arminianism and has been picked up by Arminians whose theology is not very precise. Listen to what he goes on to say here.

This view is called the governmental theory of the atonement. Its germinal teachings are found in Arminius, but his student, lawyer-theologian Hugo Grosius, delineated the view in Methodism's John Miley, and we're going to look at him later on here.

John Miley best explicated the theory in his Atonement in Christ from 1879. Arminians who know their theology have problems cooperating with Calvinist ministries because workers are often taught to counsel people that Christ paid the penalty for their sins.

Do you hear what he's saying here? He's saying if you are an Arminian, you can't tell people that Jesus paid the penalty for their sins because that view is Calvinistic. And yet you know there are so many people in the Southern Baptist Convention, we hate Calvinism, we are the Calvinism destroyers, we detest that horrid theological system, and they will look you straight in the eye and say, Jesus took the legal judicial penalty for our sins.

And then we ask, so what could the basis of damnation ever be? Well, they never accepted it, they never received it. That misunderstands the whole concept of what Scripture says about this. If the penalty has been paid, then there exists no judicial grounds for condemnation.

That's why you have to see that faith in Jesus Christ is guaranteed by the doctrine of election. I actually had a guy, the guy that wrote that book, Chosen or Not, that he asked me to review some of it before he self-published it, and I told him everything that was wrong with it, that this book was horrendously bad.

He says we're never told in Scripture that God predestines us to faith. And I pointed out in Ephesians 1, it says that we were predestined unto adoption. Is it your position that someone can be adopted by God and not have faith?

And he basically said, yeah. And I also pointed out John 6, 37, All that the Father gives me will come to me. Coming to Christ is guaranteed by the doctrine of election. Those who are elect will come to Christ.

Our faith and our repentance are secured by the crosswork of Jesus Christ. Okay, listen. Just hear that sentence again. Arminians who know their theology have problems cooperating with Calvinist ministries because workers are often taught to counsel people that Christ paid the penalty for their sins.

So guys who are not Calvinists and say, oh, I hate Calvinism, who would describe themselves as Arminians, you need to train yourself never to tell people that Jesus died for their sins. That Christ paid the penalty for their sins.

You can't say that. It doesn't fit with your system.

Listen.

But it is an important aspect of the Arminian tradition, from Arminius himself through John Wesley to the present, to be of a tolerant spirit. So they often cooperate in these ministries without mentioning the matter to the leadership.

You hear what Greider is saying here? If you describe yourself as Arminian and you say Jesus paid the penalty for your sins, he's saying you're being dishonest. You're being dishonest. You're not being consistent with the system.

Arminianism has never taught that Jesus paid the penalty for our sins on the cross. And I just want to make clear, if you don't believe that Jesus paid the penalty for sin on the cross, you're not a Christian.

You aren't a Christian if you get that wrong. If you don't understand the dozens of passages in the New Testament that Jesus' sacrifice on the cross is a sacrifice, propitiation, reconciliation, and redemption, if you don't embrace those things, then you have no understanding of Christianity.

You think that, yeah, what does his death do? Well, it shows that God, you know, it's a governmental theory. It just instills a moral influence back into the world, and people can be saved if, on other grounds, they meet the Lord's demands.

Arminians assert that Scripture always says that Christ suffered and never that he was punished. Galatians 3 .13, Christ has redeemed us from the curse of the law having become a curse for us. Where does the word penal come from, or punitive, or punished come from?

It has to do with the legal sanctions of disobedience. How does the Old Testament describe it? The curse. All who fail to conform to everything that is written in the book of the law are under its curse.

Christ bore the curse. Isaiah 53 .6, and the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all. Yes, he was punished. It was the Lord's will to punish him, to bruise him, to put him to grief. It's a legal substitution.

What could be clearer? Because the Christ who was crucified was guiltless and sinless, they also hold that the Father would not be forgiving us at all if his justice was satisfied by the real thing that justice needs, punishment.

Just listen to that. Arminians also hold that God the Father would not be forgiving us at all if his justice was satisfied by the real thing that justice needs, punishment. They understand that there can be only punishment or forgiveness, not both.

What a confusing statement. The reason God is able to justify us and be righteous and just in the process is because his justice has been satisfied. It has been demonstrated in the death of Jesus on the cross.

So this guy, what he's saying is God is either forgiving or he's just. And we say no, he has to be just in order to be forgiving. The debt has to be paid. The punishment has to be meted out. They understand that there can be only punishment or forgiveness, not both.

Realizing, for example, that a child is either punished or forgiven, not forgiven after punishment has been meted out. What a category of confusion. That's amazing to me. There is a massive difference, in scripture even, between God's fatherly discipline of his children and legally applied judicial punishment.

You know, when God takes us through a season of real trials, or he removes our assurance because of some sin in our lives, that is not a judicially applied, legally inflicted punishment. That's fatherly discipline.

When I discipline my children or have to spank my children, I'm not extracting what the law demands or anything like that. There's a difference between discipline and punishment. What an incredible category of confusion.

Then he goes on into a couple of other things. The last paragraph here, he talks about spillovers into Baptistic Calvinism and eschatology, but the last paragraph here is really good too. Listen to this one.

A considerable problem to Arminians is that they have often been misrepresented. Some scholars say that Arminianism is Pelagian, is a form of theological liberalism, and is syncretistic. It is true that one wing of Arminianism picked up Arminius' stress on human freedom and tolerance toward different theologies, becoming latitudinarian and liberal.

I would point out, everywhere Arminianism has ever gone, historically, it has degenerated into liberalism or Unitarianism. Think of the Ivy League schools in America. Yale, Dartmouth, Rutgers, Brown, Princeton, those were all, at one time, reformed seminaries.

They tolerated Arminianism and, within a fortnight, were liberal. I would also point out, historically, the Arminians have never been able to defend the inerrancy of Scripture because of their view of the supremacy of the will of man.

Think about it, folks. Think with me. Why is it that it was B .B. Warfield and the reformed guys that came to the defense of Scripture against the rise of German higher critical scholarship? Why was it us and not the Arminians?

It was us because we believe that God is sovereign and God can give us an inerrant text even using fallen, fallible, error-prone human authors. God can superintend them in such a way that what they produce is without error.

But the Arminians don't have that in their system. So how could God prevent errors from getting into Scripture if the will of man really is free, in the ultimate sense, outside of God's control? See the problem?

You see the problem? Errors never exist by themselves. They trickle down and they impact all sorts of other things in your position. Listen. Indeed, the two denominations in Holland that issued from Arminius are largely such today, meaning liberal.

But Arminians who promote Arminius's actual teachings and those of the great Arminian John Wesley, whose view and movement have been called Arminianism on fire, disclaim all those theologically left associations.