What is Arminianism? What are the 5 points of Arminianism? What is an Arminian? -Podcast Episode 196

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And just kind of in the Calvinism series, like some Armenians are like, take it or leave it as a whole package.

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And others are like, no, you can mix and choose. You can be a two -point Calvinist mixed with the three -point Armenian. And welcome to the

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Got Questions podcast. The last several episodes, we've been doing a series on Calvinism.

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We did What is Calvinism? Then we did a separate episode on each of the five points. Then we did kind of a summary, sort of a, what are the implications of Calvinism?

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So today we're actually going to be discussing what is Arminianism, which is the view most often put in contrast to Calvinism.

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So we'd invite you to go back and watch the other episodes because that would really help you to discuss.

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And you may be asking, especially if you are an Arminian bent, like why does

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Calvinism get five and Arminianism only get one? Well, one, because we believe

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Calvinism is closer to the truth than Arminianism. But two, because in the Calvinism episodes, we actually discuss each of the

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Arminian alternatives. Today we're going to be covering those a little bit more in depth. So just give you a little background of where we're at in the series and why we are doing a specific one on Arminianism.

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What I find most interesting is that Calvinism is well known for the tulip analogy, the five points, so total depravity, unconditional election, limited atonement, irresistible grace, perseverance of the saints.

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So some have felt pressure to come up with a flower analogy for Arminianism as well.

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And so there are several attempts to it, some flower -related, others not, not sure why we only so focused on flowers in these big theological conversations.

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So for Arminianism, the most commonly known one is actually daisy.

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So Jeff, why don't you break it down using kind of the daisy analogy, recognizing that not everyone is even familiar with this, like most all

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Calvinists know tulip, but how is daisy a good way of summarizing

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Arminianism in contrast to Calvinism? Well, it's good you bring that up, that it's not necessarily as well known.

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Almost anybody who identifies themselves as Calvinist or Reformed will have some knowledge of tulip or the doctrines of grace.

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There's a lot of people who likely are, would not identify as Armenians who hold to some sort of Arminian theology.

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I suppose if they did, they may know the daisy, but it's not always the most popular, but it is convenient partly because the daisy,

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D -A -I -S -Y, follows along directly in the same order as the

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T -U -L -I -P of tulip. So that makes it sort of handy for comparison purposes, at least. But yes, some

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Armenians would not necessarily agree with all of it. The first one in that, the D is diminished depravity, and that's the contrast to total depravity.

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And the basic idea of that is that in Arminianism, mankind is sinful, we are fallen, we are depraved, but not so depraved, not so fallen, that we are incapable of listening to or responding to the

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Holy Spirit. The A is the contrast to the U, the unconditional election.

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In Arminianism, that would be abrogated election, or what's sometimes called the all -encompassing call or conditional election.

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To some extent, this is the one that really becomes the controversy, because this is the idea that God elects, but his election is based on his foreknowledge of which people will or will not accept faith.

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So in the Arminian sense, God's election is there, predestination not as much.

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The next one is I, impersonal atonement, that's versus limited atonement. That's the idea that God's infinite love or general atonement is enough sacrifice for everybody, it's just not applied except to those who actually choose to believe.

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The S in Daisy is sedentary grace. That's the idea that there is what they may call spontaneous grace, or resistible grace, the counter to irresistible grace in TULIP.

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The idea is that man has to be regenerated to a certain extent before he can accept faith, but he can resist.

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So the Holy Spirit does not force a change in mind, the Holy Spirit regenerates a person to the point where they can make a free will decision, and then that person is free to say yes or no.

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And then the last part of Daisy is the Y, that's yieldable justification. That's in contrast to perseverance of the saints.

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Yieldable justification would be conditional security. This is the idea that saving faith can be lost, that you maintain your salvation insofar as you hold on.

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For some Armenians, that believes that apostasy, leaving the faith, is an unforgivable sin, that once you leave, that's it, and you cannot come back.

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Others believe that you can sort of go through cycles of being in or out, and this is almost certainly the one that, just like with the last point of Calvinism, is the most frequently disagreed with.

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There are quite a few Armenians who would disagree with the idea of yieldable justification.

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They would hold to what we would call once saved, always saved. So that's the basic idea. Any of those can be oversimplified.

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Anybody can misunderstand these things just because of the way they work. There's going to be people who will disagree a little bit about what the specifics mean, but if you want to summarize

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Arminianism quickly, the D -A -I -S -Y, DAISY, is one of the easiest ways to do it.

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Jeff, I agree with you 100%. In my experience with Arminianism, similar to Calvinism, and there are four -point

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Calvinists, three -point Calvinists, two -point, one, whatever. I find there's even more variance with Arminianism in terms of people.

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I know a lot of Armenians who, like you said, firmly believe in eternal security.

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At that point, they'd only be four -point Armenians. Actually, classical, original Arminianism named after Jacobus Arminius, his view on total depravity was virtually indistinguishable from that of Calvin.

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I don't know if the original Arminian actually held all five of these points.

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Just like in Calvinism, there's a lot of variance in terms of which points you believe. In the

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Calvinism series, some Armenians take it or leave it as a whole package. Others are like, no, you can mix and choose.

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You can be a two -point Calvinist mixed with a three -point Arminian and all this stuff. As Jeff just described the points,

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I just want you to know that just as with Calvinism, to varying degrees, each of these points have biblical support.

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That's what Kevin's going to jump into now. This is a brief discussion on where is some biblical support for some of the points of Arminianism, maybe even a little bit more of why are some of the points of Arminianism not biblical in our opinion?

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Kevin, why don't you take it from here? Sure. Some of the biblical support that Arminians will point to and say, well, this supports our position right here, include the following.

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We have John 3, verse 36, he who believes in the Son has everlasting life, and he who does not believe the

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Son shall not see life, but the wrath of God abides on him. This is pointed to as proof of the free will of mankind.

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Our salvation depends on belief. He who believes is going to have eternal life, and the person who doesn't believe is not going to see that life.

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It looks like our salvation's conditioned upon our choosing God. Romans 8, verse 29, for whom he foreknew, he also predestined.

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The Arminian would look at that verse and say, well, see, election is based on the foreknowledge of God.

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God looked into the future, and he saw who would choose him, and so God then, in turn, chose that person.

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That person is one of the elect because of God's knowledge, his foreknowledge, that that person would eventually choose him.

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So this would be going along with conditional election, that God elects individuals based on his foreknowledge of who would ultimately be believing in him.

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1 John 2, verse 2, he's the propitiation for our sins, and not for ours only, but also for the sins of the whole world.

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This would support unlimited atonement. We talked about this when we talked about the

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L of TULIP, the limited atonement. That's probably the one point of Calvinism that I personally have the most problem with, because of, in large part, because of this verse, 1

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John 2, verse 2, which seems to very directly say that Christ was a propitiation, that is the satisfaction, for the sins of the whole world.

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1 Thessalonians 5, in verse 19, is another proof text used by the Arminian camp, do not quench the spirit.

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And then another verse that we talked about in a previous podcast, Luke 7, in verse 30, the Pharisees and the experts of the law rejected

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God's purpose for themselves, because they had not been baptized by John. So God's purpose was that they do repent, which would be shown in the baptism of John, but they refused that.

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They refused God's will for them. They refused God's purpose for them. And so that passage, along with the command to not quench the

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Holy Spirit, the Arminian position says, well, see, this says that grace is resistible, that we can indeed say no to the

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Holy Spirit, and God gives us that freedom to resist him, to oppose his will and not have it be activated in our lives.

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And then Galatians 5, in verse 4, you have become estranged from Christ.

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You who attempt to be justified by the law, you have fallen from grace, Paul says here.

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So the Arminian position, at least some Arminians, not all of them, teach that you can lose your salvation.

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And so this would be a passage that they would point to saying the fall from grace here is

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Paul's way of saying that they have lost their salvation. And so this is, of course, we would look at this passage differently, but the

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Arminian interpretation would be that salvation might be given up.

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Salvation might be lost. You can fall away from that. I do not consider myself to be an

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Arminian. I'm more of an Amaraldian, a four -point Calvinist is how I would classify myself.

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But there have been a lot of men that I respect who have been in the

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Arminian camp. John and Charles Wesley, of course, were holders of Arminian theology, and I love what they have done.

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Also, A .W. Tozer, a guy that I love. I have read a whole lot of Tozer, and his work has just been a blessing to me in so many different ways.

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I love Tozer, but he would have fallen into the Arminian side of things as well.

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Andrew Murray, who wrote a lot about prayer. R .A. Torrey, another very good theologian and writer.

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David Wilkerson, the cross and the switchblade guy, and I've read several of his books, and I appreciate all that God did through him.

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John R. Rice, I've read several of his commentaries, and he's another one who would be classified as an

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Arminian, and yet a real blessing to me. I think,

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Kevin, I appreciate you going through the different godly men and teachers who hold to an

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Arminian perspective. I think that's a really important reminder that even though we think

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Calvinism is closer to the truth than Arminianism, in no sense do we believe that Arminians are heretics or that Arminians are the

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Resistance of Christ. With the eternal security point, that's the hardest one for me, because it's really hard for me to see how you can deny eternal security and not somehow believe in some form of work salvation.

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We have to maintain our salvation, we have to keep ourselves saved, and that comes awfully close to earning our salvation.

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But I know Arminians who don't believe in eternal security, who firmly and absolutely believe that salvation is by grace alone, through faith alone, and Christ alone.

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So I don't think any of the points of Arminianism are necessarily heresy, and I do believe, just Kevin, as you went through, there are biblical passages, especially on unlimited atonement, that do seem to support the

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Arminian perspective. So do we consider ourselves Arminians? No, we do not.

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Do we consider Arminianism heresy? Also, no, we do not. It's throughout this whole series, even on the points of Calvinism, we're like, there are some that we agree with more so than others, others that we reject outright with the unlimited atonement example.

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So hear us trying to, yes, these issues are important, they're fascinating, they're fun to study, can even be, in the right circumstance, a fun debate to have.

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But just know, dividing over this, fighting over this, declaring Calvinists declaring

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Arminians unsaved, Arminians declaring Calvinists unsaved, that's not our heart, not our spirit, not our attitude here at GotQuestions at all.

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So the basic idea that we're getting into with all of these is that there are differences of opinion, both inside and outside of these different perspectives.

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So you can have people who sincerely, honestly, with good faith, take the Bible seriously, and they come up with different interpretations.

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And even within those different ideas, just as there is within Calvinism, Arminians may have different ideas about what the specific versions of this mean or don't mean.

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For me, one of the things that's important to be careful of is, just like with Calvinism, we have to know what some of these different ideas imply.

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There's some aspects of Calvinism that I look at and I say, if I take this exactly the way it's understood,

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I don't know if I agree theologically with some of the implications. With Arminianism, at least for me, some of those are a little bit more serious.

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The overall one, just like with Calvinism, we talked about the idea that the main gist of it is the idea of sovereignty, that God is completely and totally 100 % in control.

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The flip side of that is going to be the Arminian view, which is essentially that when it comes to salvation, people are 100 % in control.

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That doesn't mean that Arminians don't believe that God is sovereign. It's not that they believe that God has no control or no power.

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But the Arminian view suggests that God entirely places that decision in the hands of human beings, that he only calls people, only provides such that they have a choice, they have a chance, but he does not actually make that happen.

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So, in the construct that we just talked about, in the traditional daisy sense, God's election is based on his foreknowledge.

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And that's a really important distinction to make, because there are other ways to look at the relationship between free will and God's sovereignty.

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But this one, for Arminianism, really says that God looks ahead and then he elects based on what he is seeing.

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The choice is still that of persons. For me, that gets a little theologically awkward, because now, you know, then what does election really mean, in that sense?

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You know, if God is just secondary to what's happening, I know there's going to be people who will have a different take on what that means and what it doesn't mean, but that's a little bit of the way that goes together.

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There are different implications of what the Arminian ideas mean. The idea of yieldable justification, or that you can lose your salvation, just like Hugh was saying,

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Shay, that very strongly leads towards a works based sort of idea. If it's possible for me to physically do something, think something, to lose my salvation, then why am

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I saying that it's based on grace if I have to do something to keep or to maintain it? So, different ways to look at this.

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There's even different acronyms that people use for Arminianism. Some of the ideas are more biblical than others.

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Some of them are a little bit riskier, and the important thing is to know what the implications are for the different ones.

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Understand where they go, where they lead, and where they don't lead. RL – Jeff, that's a great point. When you take any of these theological systems to their extreme, it can result in all sorts of problems.

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I guess we probably do need to talk about double predestination and hyper -Calvinism on that side.

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Maybe we'll save that for another episode. Kevin, I know in your study of Arminianism, you came up with some of the extreme views that definitely not all

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Arminians hold this, but if you take Arminianism to an extreme viewpoint, what are some of the problems that can result, theologically speaking?

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KV – Yeah, and I'm glad that you framed it that way, that if you take Arminianism to extremes, extremes that are not intended, then you can end up with some false doctrines.

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I want to be careful here, careful to explain that what these false teachings are are not taught by Arminians, but there is an association.

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Sometimes the Arminian theology can come close to some of these other doctrines.

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One, for example, would be semi -Pelagianism. Semi -Pelagianism really emphasizes free will.

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We have the free will, not necessarily to choose good and evil, but we do have the free will to choose

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Christ. There's nothing in our nature that would prohibit us from taking that first step toward God and choosing faith, choosing

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Christ. Now, the Arminian position says that God has to make that first move through prevenient grace, and so God gives us the grace to free our will, and then we can freely choose to accept

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Christ. Prevenient grace does not require us to accept

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Christ, but it enables us to. Well, the semi -Pelagian position kind of dispenses with the prevenient grace.

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You don't need that. You can choose Christ on your own power.

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You have that ability. So again, semi -Pelagianism is not

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Arminianism, but in some ways it comes very close in that it emphasizes the free will of man to a great extent.

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I should probably throw in here too that a lot of times we see the conflict here between Calvinism and Arminianism as being between God's sovereignty being emphasized on one hand and man's free will being emphasized on the other hand.

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But most Arminians would say that the crux of the matter is really

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God's goodness, that the focus of Arminianism is the goodness of God, the character of God, the love of God.

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Because he loves, he gives us a choice. Because he is good, he gives us the prevenient grace we need to be able to freely make that choice.

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So a little distinction there that I think that our Arminian friends would appreciate that they want to emphasize

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God's goodness. But another false teaching that is sometimes associated with Arminianism is open theism.

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This is the idea that God does not know the future when it comes to the choices that we're going to make.

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So again, it emphasizes man's free will, that God gives us totally free will, and he lets us decide, and then he responds accordingly.

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So as he looks into the future, he does not look at, he cannot even see, maybe, what choices we're going to make.

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And so he waits for us to make those choices, and then he responds, open theism.

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See, a lot of open theists would consider themselves to be Arminian. Most Arminians would want to disassociate themselves, though, from open theism as a theology.

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And so there's kind of a disconnect there. And then also the doctrine of sinless perfection. Now there are

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Arminians who teach this, that it is possible to actually completely defeat sin in our lives to such an extent that we are no longer sinners.

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We have reached that state of sinless perfection here and now in this world.

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Now I want to be careful to say that this goes beyond what Arminius actually taught, but there are some

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Arminians today who would hold to this. Not all of them, but some of them do hold to some version of sinless perfection.

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And so those three false teachings are sometimes related to Arminianism when it is taken to a little bit too far, in my opinion.

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But then there's the idea that you can lose your salvation that a lot of Arminians hold to, and that for me is a deal breaker in and of itself.

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There is a big difference between the things that are clear and the things that are not, and it's good that you mentioned the idea that some things sort of become a caricature.

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You know, the Calvinist caricature of Arminianism is God is just sitting there twiddling his thumbs, not really involved, and just letting people do whatever, and he's handing over everything to them.

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Whereas the Arminian caricature of Calvinism is that God is this uncaring robot who's just programming us like Plinko chips or machines to just do whatever we want.

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Neither one of those is really true. That's not the way that either an Arminian or a Calvinist perceives their concept of what these doctrines of grace mean.

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That does not mean that you cannot get into theological problems when, like you said, Kevin, you take some of these ideas and you run with them by assuming that they're just fundamental truths rather than just human attempts to understand what's behind there.

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We talked about those with Calvinism, that you can get a runaway version of that where it leads to hyper -Calvinism, where the idea is, okay,

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God's totally sovereign and man has no choice, so why evangelize? Then you've got the Arminian side that says, God gives us all the free choice, that means

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I have to keep my salvation, and he's just going to let me do what I'm going to do. Either one of those you've got to be careful with because it's very easy to turn these things into cartoons.

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It's sometimes been said that Calvin would not have been a Calvinist and Arminius would not have been an

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Arminian because, to some extent, those versions and those ideas of faith have changed.

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They've morphed a little over time. So again, the tribalism is not what's important. It's not that we identify a certain way and then defend from there.

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It's that we understand and then assess individually as we go forward. Yeah. Jeff, I like how you described him as caricatures because the most common caricature

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I hear from Calvinists about Arminians is that essentially they don't want to believe that God's in control, that they want to believe that they are personally in control.

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No one can tell me what to do. I made the decisions for Seacrest. I did this.

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I did this. And so when Kevin mentioned open theism, I'm thinking, yeah, that definitely makes sense because if God knows the future, then in a sense the future is set, and then therefore that takes away my choice.

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So you can see how it flows from the point of questioning. The Bible presents that God elects, but also we must also individually, by grace through faith, receive

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Christ. So there has to be some sort of choice. But if God actually knows the future, is that taking away my choice that therefore

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God can't know the future, which is what we'd say is heresy? Because the Bible gives you so many countless examples of God both knowing the future, but God also controlling, setting, determining the future.

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So taking to a logical extreme the view of, no, there has to be some sort of human responsibility, free will in this conversation.

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Taking that to a logical stream is that God can't know the future because that would take away my free will. So you can kind of see how both the caricature, but the caricature even presents a problem that is a reality in many

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Arminians that can, for some, lead them to a logical extreme. So seeing these points intertwine, seeing how they relate to one another, really helps to think through the issues and both what does the

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Bible teach, and then also what are the implications of both belief systems, and even to an extent what is the heart behind them?

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Because I think that determines a lot of both what we believe and how we react to the opposite side.

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The thing that you see most often, I think, that demonstrates where controversy comes up and it's not necessarily handled the best way is in the way that those two perspectives, and as we said before, there are others, there are other ways to look at this than just Calvinism and Arminianism.

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But when those two especially come together, frequently what you see happening is you have some things that scripture says that talk about free will, and the

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Arminian side looks at those and says, that means exactly what it means as simply as it's stated in the most clear sense when you first read it.

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And then everything that talks about predestination, election, God's sovereignty, God's choice, all those things, those things all have to be taken in either some sort of a metaphorical sense or they have to be sort of moved around or wrapped around.

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And right now, all the Calvinists are going, yes, that's right. Well, it's exactly the same thing the other way. There are times where in this discussion, the

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Calvinists will read verses that talk about God's sovereignty and his election and his predestination and say, that is true in the simplest, literalist, most direct form.

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But then every time that it talks about people resisting or choosing or being held responsible, those all have to be taken as metaphor or moved around and twisted around.

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So it's worth at least recognizing when we have a perspective on things, where are we handling scripture and how are we handling scripture in that sense?

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That's not to say that you have to be all literal or all metaphorical or one way or the other. It's just to note that neither one of these two sides in this particular debate can claim that they're perfectly objective.

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There isn't anybody who's perfectly objective on that. So it's not just a question of saying, which of these systems on the whole do we think is more biblical?

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It's more a question of looking at these individual questions. Where do we think the

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Bible comes down? And then how does your typical Calvinist, typical Armenian, typical whatever, have to say about that?

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Hopefully, especially if you've watched or listened to the other episodes in this series, you've heard us say that the point of GotQuestions .org

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is not to promote Calvinism or Arminianism for that example. Our goal is to, here's what the

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Bible teaches. And going through the series, here's the five points of Calvinism. Today we're discussing

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Arminianism, both just to give you the idea of different ways Christians throughout history and even today are still discussing, trying to understand these issues.

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But ultimately, that's what we want you to do. We want you to search the scriptures, go to God's word, study the different references that we've brought up throughout this whole series and ask

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God for wisdom and come to what you believe to be the biblical viewpoint.

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And with that said, we're not ashamed to say that we believe that Calvinism is closer to the truth than Arminianism.

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But at the same time, we do not consider Arminianism heresies. We have more problems with some of the points of Arminianism than others.

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But ultimately, this is an issue that we believe that God is fully sovereign.

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We believe that He predestines, He elects. We believe that human beings, we are genuinely, legitimately responsible for exercising our will to trust in Christ.

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How that all works, how those two truths work together, that's the rub. That's where ultimately this debate comes down to.

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And as much as we enjoy discussing this, I've answered literally thousands of questions over the years on these issues.

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Ultimately, the answer does not change our responsibility, which is to be active in sharing the gospel.

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Whether you believe in Calvinism or Arminianism, our job is to make disciples through proclaiming the gospel, teaching

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God's word, and then trusting that God is behind the scenes producing the results, producing the changes that He desires, that God is the one drawing people to salvation.

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And yet somehow that drawing results in the people actually believing in the gospel, trusting in Jesus Christ by grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone.

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And both Calvinists and Arminians believe that, but the other side has trouble understanding how the other side can believe that based on their beliefs.

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So I hope our conversation throughout these episodes have been helpful to you.

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I hope today's conversation of what is Arminianism and how does it relate to Calvinism has also been helpful. We'll be doing one more, just kind of discussing some of the other alternatives there are to Calvinism and Arminianism, and maybe trying to tie this whole series up in a nice little bow, which

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I doubt will actually happen, but we'll give it our best shot. So Jeff, Kevin, thank you for joining me today.

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This has been the episode on what is Arminianism. Got questions? The Bible has answers, and we'll help you find them.