TPW #5 | Historical Arminianism And Errors On The Atonement

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 in our.

Unity to Christ.

Historical Arminianism and the Meaning of Penal Substitution

Welcome to the Protestant Witness. I am your host, Pastor Patrick Hines of Bridwell Heights Presbyterian Church in Kingsport, Tennessee. Continuing on our series on what is historical Arminianism. As I said in previous programs, I don't think many people know what Arminianism even is.

The term Arminian is used to describe beliefs and ideas that would have been foreign to Arminius himself, and were certainly foreign to the Remonstrants who leveled their five protestations against the Reformed churches in the Netherlands back in the early 17th century.

So I want to help people understand what we're really talking about when we address historical Arminian theology. You may recall in a previous episode, we looked at an article in the Evangelical Dictionary of Theology by Arminian theologian J. Kenneth Greider, where he is upset about the idea that Calvinistic ideas like the penal substitutionary atonement have in recent decades spilled over into Arminian theology.

And so people need to know that historic Arminian theology does not believe in the substitutionary atonement. And for the record, I just want to be as clear as I can. If you do not believe in the penal substitutionary atonement of Christ, you cannot possibly be a Christian.

Because a Christian is someone who sees the depth of their own sin. They can see that they are sinful and fall short of God's glory. Because the law of God has exposed their sin and has shown them all the ways in which they have disobeyed God and thus they are under the just condemnation of God.

The only way that sinners could be saved from this plight is if God were to take upon himself human flesh, which he did, thankfully, in the person of Jesus of Nazareth, and obey all of the preceptive righteousness of the law, what Romans chapter 8 verses 3 and 4 calls the righteous requirements of the law.

You may recall also Galatians chapter 4 verses 4 and 5 speaks of when the fullness of time had come, God sent forth his Son born of a woman, born under the law, to redeem those who are under the law that we might receive the adoption of sons.

And so this whole idea of Christ taking the penalty, the punishment, the judicial sanction of the law of God upon himself at the cross, that is essential to understanding what it means for a person to be reconciled to God and made right with God and justified before God.

The law of God, I mean, the entire Bible reads like a legal document. The Bible starts out with man and being in covenant with God. God enters into a covenant of life with Adam and all of his posterity in him and Adam fails to obey and thus he brings upon himself and his posterity the covenant sanction of not only physical but eternal and spiritual death.

So the whole issue of substitutionary atonement is absolutely essential to Christianity and what I've told friends that I've talked to just in the past, you know, a couple decades who would describe themselves as believing in free will and that in the final analysis it is man's autonomous independent act of faith or other things that are done independently of God that are the decisive force in salvation.

I have tried to tell them that you really can't hold together the idea of a substitutionary atonement that has infinite intrinsic saving value together with the idea of man's autonomous freedom being the decisive factor in salvation.

And the reason for that is if you begin to look very seriously at what the scriptures teach us about the nature of the atonement and look at the key terms that are used to describe it, namely sacrifice, propitiation, reconciliation, and redemption, those terms are always spoken of in Scripture not as hypothetical but as actual real.

Accomplishments.

Actual real accomplishments on the part of God towards his people and the people for whom Jesus died. Romans chapter 3, for example, has what the commentator Leon Morris calls the greatest paragraph ever written in verses 21 through 26.

But now apart from the law the righteousness of God has been manifested being witnessed by the law and the prophets even the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all those who believe for there is no distinction for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God being justified as a gift by his grace through the redemption, which is in Christ Jesus whom God displayed publicly as a propitiation in his blood through faith.

This was to demonstrate his righteousness because in the forbearance of God he passed over the sins previously committed for the demonstration, I say, of his righteousness at the present time so that he would be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus.

That term.

Propitiation, the term hilasterion, refers to a sacrifice which actually takes away divine wrath. It actually does it. It's not hypothetical. But it actually takes it away. And that's why Arminians who have been consistent, the Arminians who are consistent with the overarching principles of their religious beliefs eventually will discard the idea of a substitutionary atonement altogether because they have to.

They have to reject that idea because if you have an atonement of real, true, propitiatory, infinite, intrinsic, saving worth, then everyone that Jesus did that for is going to heaven. Everyone he did that for is going to heaven and it accomplishes nothing to say, well, but they never received it.

Think about this. If someone was on death row and they were sentenced to die by lethal injection and the judge makes the assertion, makes the assertion that I will accept the death of this other individual in their place if they're willing to die.

And that person steps up onto the gurney and they they lethally inject him with the chemicals that bring about his death. Whether that individual ever received it or not is irrelevant. The penalty has been paid.

That's the problem. Now people immediately will say, well, that's not that's not an illustration the Bible uses. It doesn't need to use it. When you look at the terms, look at what redemption means. Look at what apollutrosis means, redemption.

Look at what reconciliation means, propitiation, sacrifice. Look at what those terms actually are referring to and you'll see you cannot have Jesus doing this for everyone in the human race. Now the Great Reformation really recovered the centrality and the glory and the greatness of the atonement of Christ and it was especially brought forward here in the Canons of Dort.

And so I want to get into the second point here today. The second point, the second main point of doctrine that the Arminian Remonstrants, the protestors, wanted revised in the Belgic Confession and the Heidelberg Catechism, they wanted this to be removed, is the idea that Christ died only for his elect people and not in behalf of the entire human race.

And so this head of doctrine in the Canons of Dort is called Christ's Death and Human Redemption Through It. Article number one, the punishment which God's justice requires. God is not only supremely merciful, but also supremely just.

His justice requires, as he has revealed himself in the word, that the sins we have committed against his infinite majesty be punished with both temporal and eternal punishments of soul as well as body.

We cannot escape these punishments unless satisfaction is given to God's justice. Okay, that's the first article. Amen. That's exactly correct. Article two, the satisfaction made by Christ. Since, however, we ourselves cannot give this satisfaction or deliver ourselves from God's anger, God in his boundless mercy has given us as a guarantee his only begotten son who was made to be sin and a curse for us in our place on the cross in order that he might give satisfaction for us.

Amen. Exactly correct. Article number three, the infinite value of Christ's death. This death of God's son is the only and entirely complete sacrifice and satisfaction for sins. It is of infinite value and worth, more than sufficient to atone for the sins of the whole world.

Article four, reasons for this infinite value. This death is of such great value and worth for the reason that the person who suffered it is and was necessary to be our Savior, not only a true and perfectly holy man, but also the only begotten Son of God of the same eternal and infinite essence with the Father and the Holy Spirit.

Another reason is that this death was accompanied by the experience of God's anger and curse, which we by our sins had fully deserved. Article five, the mandate to proclaim the gospel to all. Moreover, it is the promise of the gospel that whoever believes in Christ shall not perish but have eternal life.

This promise, together with the command to repent and believe, ought to be announced and declared without differentiation or discrimination to all nations and people to whom God and his good pleasure sends the gospel.

Article six, unbelief, man's responsibility. However, that many who have been called through the gospel do not repent or believe in Christ, but perish in unbelief, is not because the sacrifice of Christ offered on the cross is deficient or insufficient, but because they themselves are at fault.

Article seven, faith, God's gift. But all who genuinely believe and are delivered and saved by Christ's death from their sins and from destruction receive this favor solely from God's grace, which he owes to no one, given to them in Christ from eternity.

Article eight, the saving effectiveness of Christ's death. For it was the entirely free plan and very gracious will and intention of God the Father that the enlivening and saving effectiveness of his son's costly death should work itself out in all his chosen ones in order that he might grant justifying faith to them only and thereby lead them without fail to salvation.

In other words, it was God's will that Christ, through the blood of the cross, by which he confirmed the new covenant, should effectively redeem from every people, tribe, nation, and language all those and only those who were chosen from eternity to salvation and given to him by the Father, that he should grant them faith, which, like the Holy Spirit's other saving gifts, he acquired for them by his death.

But I can't emphasize to you how important that last sentence is. Faith in Jesus Christ is a blood-purchased gift of Christ for his elect people. Faith is not our independent contribution to the equation to make it work.

Okay, listen to that again. That he should grant them faith, which, like the Holy Spirit's other saving gifts, he acquired for them by his death, that he should cleanse them by his blood from all their sins, both original and actual, whether committed before or after their coming to faith, that he should faithfully preserve them to the very end, and that he should finally present them to himself a glorious people without spot or wrinkle.

Article 9, the fulfillment of God's plan. This plan, arising out of God's eternal love for his chosen ones from the beginning of the world to the present time, has been powerfully carried out and will also be carried out in the future, the gates of hell seeking vainly to prevail against it.

As a result, the chosen are gathered into one all in their own time, and there is always a church of believers founded on Christ's blood, a church which steadfastly loves, persistently worships, and here and in all eternity praises him as her Savior, who laid down his life for her on the cross as a bridegroom for his bride.

End quote. Amen, amen, amen. You gotta love that stuff. These guys knew what they were talking about.

The Rejection of Errors on the Atonement

Now,.

The issue of the atonement and who Jesus died for is a very, very important topic, and so we need to go into the section now on the rejection of errors. Remember, when we go into the rejection of errors, we're talking about the beliefs of what a historic Arminianism was all about.

This is what they were rejecting. Having set forth the Orthodox teaching, the Synod rejects the errors of those, number one, who teach that God the Father appointed his Son to death on the cross without a fixed and definite plan to save anyone by name, so that the necessity, usefulness, and worth of what Christ's death obtained could have stood intact and altogether perfect, complete and whole, even if the redemption that was obtained had never in actual fact been applied to any individual.

These.

Arminians were saying that Christ's death on the cross was not intended to actually save anyone. As J. Kenneth Greider said in the article, the death of Jesus makes everyone savable, and that's it. So the death of Christ can do what it does, had it been completely ineffective and every human being in the entire race of man died in their sins and went to hell.

Okay, obviously that is not a proper position to hold. I remember years ago reading a tract called, Was anyone saved at the cross? And I'd never really thought about that question, and when you think hard about it, the Arminians really have to say to that question, No.

Was anyone saved at the cross? No. They weren't actually saved there. Everything that was needed was put sort of in place, that the machinery was set up, the system was set up and thrown out there, but without the free will, autonomous, independent cooperation of man, the death of Christ is completely in vain.

Okay, listen to what the Synod goes on to say here in this first point. For this assertion, that the assertion that Christ died without the intention of actually saving anyone, is an insult to the wisdom of God the Father and to the merit of Jesus Christ, and it is contrary to Scripture.

For the Savior speaks as follows, I lay down my life for the sheep, and I know them. That's John chapter 10 verse 15 and 27. That text of Scripture, I think, is devastating to the idea of a universal atonement.

Jesus is very clear in that text. He is addressing specifically, who he lays his life down for, and he limits it to the sheep. When his opponents, later on in John chapter 10, as you get into the upper 20s of the verses there, they begin to express their unbelief, Jesus tells them, you do not believe because you are not of my sheep.

You see what he's saying? Their unbelief was because they were not his sheep. And who does Jesus lay his life down for? The sheep. He doesn't lay his life down for everybody. He only lays his life down for the sheep, and the reason those men did not believe is, they were not of his sheep.

As a very insightful man once said, you don't say, Baba, to become a sheep. You say, Baba, because you are a sheep. He goes on here, the synod goes on, and Isaiah the prophet says concerning the Savior, When he shall make himself an offering for sin, he shall see his offspring, he shall prolong his days, and the will of Yahweh shall prosper in his hand, Isaiah 53 10.

Finally, this undermines the article of the creed in which we confess what we believe concerning the church. Now, that's the end of the first error here. Isn't that interesting, the way that they put that?

To say that Jesus was sent into the world without a definite number of individually elected people who were elected by name, individually from all eternity, to be the sheep of Christ, for whom he would give his life, that is to deny the line of the Apostles Creed, I believe in the church.

I believe in one holy, universal, and apostolic church. What is the church? What is the ecclesia? It is the called out ones. What is the invisible church? It's all of God's elect. So really, in the final analysis, the Arminians do not believe in the church.

The church is all of the elect that were chosen by God unconditionally for salvation before the foundation of the world, given to Christ, and entrusted to him. And so, if you don't believe that Jesus came specifically to lay his life down for his sheep, that he did not do what the angel told Joseph in the dream in Matthew chapter 1, and you shall call his name Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins.

Instead, you will call his name Jesus, because he will make salvation possible for everybody if they'll do X, Y, or Z. That's just no part of divine revelation. So we do believe in the church. We believe that God has an elect people.

That is what the church is. Okay, the second error. They reject the errors of those who teach that the purpose of Christ's death was not to establish an actual fact, a new covenant of grace by his blood, but only to acquire for the Father the mere right to enter once more into a covenant with men, whether of grace or of works.

For this conflicts with Scripture, which teaches that Christ has become the guarantee and mediator of a better, that is, a new covenant. Hebrews 7 .22 and Hebrews 9 .15. Hebrews 7 .22 is a great text of Scripture because it speaks about Jesus being the surety, the guarantee of a better covenant.

That term surety that's used there in Hebrews 7 .22 is speaking about Jesus being the legal representative of his people. Jesus takes on the legal responsibility to make sure that all the demands are met, all the demands of God's law are met in behalf of those whom he represents.

That's what the whole idea of him being the mediator of a better covenant. He is the surety of it, and the synod continues, and that a will is enforced only when someone has died. So Christ died. He is now the the testator of that covenant.

Okay, point three. They reject the errors of those who teach that Christ, by the satisfaction which he gave, did not certainly merit for anyone salvation itself and the faith by which this satisfaction of Christ is effectively applied to salvation, but only acquired for the Father the authority or plenary will to relate in a new way with men and to impose such new conditions as he chose, and that the satisfying of these conditions depends on the free choice of man.

Consequently, that it was possible that either all or none would fulfill them. This is a scandalous idea. The Arminians were really saying that it was possible that God the Father could send God the Son into the world to take on human flesh, to go to the cross, to die there, to be buried and rise again and ascend back to heaven and intercede right now, and it actually not work for anyone.

It actually not save anybody. So we are rejecting the idea that Christ, by the satisfaction that he gave at the cross, only acquired for the Father the ability to impose a few newer, easier conditions, which if men freely meet them of their own accord, then they could be saved.

And here's the answer. For they have too low an opinion of the death of Christ. Yeah, I think so. Listen to that again. People who think that have too low of an opinion of the death of Christ do not at all acknowledge the foremost fruit or benefit which it brings forth and summon back from hell the Pelagian error.

You hear what they're saying here? They're saying that if you believe that what Jesus did was he died for the sins of every single human being in the world and now God is able to issue some easier conditions.

Okay, all you got to do now to go to heaven is just exercise faith of your own accord without any interference from God. Oh sure, we'll say that prevenient grace is necessary to make it possible, but the decisive factor is still man's autonomous free will.

The Council Fathers at Dort say that is bringing out of hell the Pelagian error. So is it a big deal if people say that the decisive factor in our salvation is something that we did independently of God's decree and of God's sovereign will?

Yes. They saw that is ultimately to make men their own saviors. You can't say that. You can't say that what Christ did he did for everybody and now God has given us easier conditions that we can now meet and then save ourselves.

And as the Council Fathers said here, that is too low of an opinion of the death of Christ. It does not at all acknowledge the foremost fruit or benefit which it brings forth and summon back from hell the Pelagian error.

You see Pelagianism was condemned early on at the Council of Orange in 529. Semipelagianism, Cassianism, John Cassian and the quote-unquote semi Pelagians, they were condemned as well. Okay, and so what is Pelagianism?

What is semi Pelagianism? It's the idea that men save themselves. And I just want to say for the record as far as my own study of God's Word over the years and dealing with these issues, I really do not see a very big difference between saying that men save themselves and that men save themselves with help from God.

Because what's the decisive factor in both of those scenarios? In the scenario number one, men save themselves. Number two, men save themselves with God's help. What's the difference between those two scenarios?

Nothing really, because what's the decisive factor in both? Man. And then you have the biblical teaching, God saves sinners. As Paul says in 1st Timothy, this is a faithful saying and worthy of all acceptation that God sent His Son into the world to save sinners.

Not to make their salvation possible or to open the door, but to save them. So dying to save them. Okay, the next point, they reject the errors of those regarding the atonement who teach that what is involved in the new covenant of grace, which God the Father made with men through the intervening of Christ's death, is not that we are justified before God and saved through faith insofar as it accepts Christ's merit, but rather that God, having withdrawn His demand for perfect obedience to the law, counts faith itself and the imperfect obedience of faith as perfect obedience to the law, and graciously looks upon this as worthy of the reward of eternal life.

Hmm, kind of reminds me of some of the things that John Piper has been saying. God looks at this, the fruits of our faith, He calls it the obedience of faith, as if that obedience is somehow accepted in the place of perfect obedience to the law and therefore is worthy of eternal life or something like that.

So they're rejecting the idea that what the new covenant is all about is that we, not that we're justified before God and saved through faith insofar as it accepts Christ's merit, but rather that God, having withdrawn His demand for perfect obedience to the law, which He could never do.

Folks, I want you to think about that. If the Arminians are saying God has withdrawn, He has just withdrawn His demand that we be perfect and instead is willing to accept imperfect obedience, or He'll count faith as our new obedience or something like that, that is to reject what the scripture teaches.

That is to reject what God's Word teaches. God in His character as holy is immutable. God cannot withdraw the demands of the law. He cannot delete what His character requires from us. He demands and requires from us perfect righteousness.

That's why when Jesus was expositing the law in Matthew chapter 5 in the Sermon on the Mount, He says in Matthew 5 48,. Therefore you shall be perfect even as your Father in heaven is perfect. So God can't withdraw His demand that we be perfectly obedient to the law and instead count our obedience, our imperfect obedience of faith as the grounds of our salvation.

That's just not possible. And the reason it's not, listen to their reasoning here from scripture. They contradict scripture. They are justified freely by His grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus whom God presented as a sacrifice of atonement through faith in His blood.

And along with the ungodly Sosinus, the Sosinians, they introduce a new and foreign justification of man before God against the consensus of the whole church. We are not justified on account of or on the basis of faith.

We are justified through faith. Faith is simply the laying hold of Jesus Christ. Faith only justifies us insofar as it embraces the saving object of that faith, Jesus Christ. And so, you know, B .B. Warfield has some wonderful stuff on that, that it's not even properly speaking faith in Christ that saves us, but that Christ saves us through faith.

So there's nothing meritorious or virtuous about faith. Faith is simply laying hold of Jesus. We are saved by Jesus Christ, not by our act of faith. Faith is simply the instrumental cause, the link by which we are united to Christ and thus have His righteousness imputed to us and His satisfaction at the cross accepted as our own.

Okay, fifthly, they reject the errors of those who teach that all people have been received into the state of reconciliation and into the grace of the covenant, so that no one on account of original sin is liable to condemnation or is to be condemned, but that all are free from the guilt of this sin.

For this opinion conflicts with scripture, which asserts that we are by nature children of wrath. That's Ephesians chapter 2 verse 3. Sixthly, they reject the errors of those who make use of the distinction between obtaining and applying in order to instill in the unwary and inexperienced the opinion that God, as far as He is concerned, wished to bestow equally upon all people the benefits which are gained by Christ's death, but that the distinction by which some rather than others come to share in the forgiveness of sins and eternal life depends on their own free choice, which applies itself to the grace offered indiscriminately, but does not depend on the unique gift of mercy which effectively works in them, so that they rather than others apply that grace to themselves.

For while pretending to set forth this distinction in an acceptable sense, they attempt to give the people the deadly poison of.

Pelagianism.

You hear that? What this article here, article number six, that they are rejecting under the heading of Christ's atonement, this is what almost everybody believes today. This is what almost everybody believes today.

That God, as far as He is concerned, He wanted to bestow equally upon all people the benefits which are gained by Christ's death, but that there's a distinction between obtaining and applying. Listen to how it's said here again.

But that the distinction by which some rather than others come to share in the forgiveness of sins and eternal life depends on their own free choice, but not depend, but does not depend on the unique gift of mercy which effectively works in them, so that they rather than others apply that grace to themselves.

You see, what is, why do they keep calling this Pelagianism? Because it locates the decisive factor in salvation in man the creature, not in God. And that's what Pelagianism is all about, historically.

And so they're not saying, yeah, this is a bit of a mistake, and yeah, this is not, this is not okay, but, but these, you know, these folks are still, they're still Christians, they're still our brothers.

They're saying these people are feeding people the deadly poison of Pelagianism. And so it's not a small matter. This is a huge problem. Now, I will, I will make this one statement though. I was a, I was a Christian.

I did understand that Jesus was my only hope, and I had no, no confidence at all in my works, or I didn't even, you know, rely upon my faith, my confidence was in Christ alone, for several years before I became a Calvinist.

But once someone walked me through all these passages, I saw it very clearly, and I knew, wow, God is the one who came after me. I mean, he, he is the one who worked this in me. No one is able, oudais dunatai, no one is able to come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him, and I will raise him up at the last day.

God is the one who drew me to himself. All that the Father gives me will come to me, Jesus said in John 6, 37. And to say that we, independently of God, come to Christ, and therefore make the benefits of his cross work effective for ourselves, is, as the Council Fathers say here, to give people the deadly poison of Pelagianism.

Now, there, there's not many people today who are willing to say, well, Arminianism is a form of Pelagianism. But the fact is, it is, and our Council Fathers here were correct in pointing this out. And so, again, this is nothing new, and this is what most people believe today.

God wanted to save everybody, but, you know, he put, he put the atonement out there, and then others, by their own free choice, make it effective, and thus they, they apply the grace of God effectively to themselves, by their own free will, rather than God being the one who terrorizes our souls, and who opens our blind eyes, and who effectually calls us, and regenerates us, and takes out the heart of stone, and gives us a heart of flesh, and draws us irresistibly to Christ, and thus to God alone be the glory for our salvation.

Okay, seventhly, they, the Council Fathers reject the errors of those who teach that Christ neither could die, nor had to die, nor did die for those whom God so dearly loved, and chose to eternal life, since such people do not need the death of Christ.

For they contradict the Apostle, who says, Christ loved me, and gave himself up for me. And likewise, who will bring any charge against those whom God has chosen? It is God who justifies. Who is he that condemns?

Romans 8, 31 to 33. It is Christ who died, that is for them. And I think that passage is, is very, very important. If you have your Bible, I want you to look at this. This is a text of scripture years ago, that really jarred me, and helped me see the, the explicit nature of the reality that Jesus's death upon the cross is a real atonement, in behalf of his elect people.

I think it's unfortunate that it's couched as unlimited versus limited atonement, as if we're somehow limiting the grace of God, or limiting the effectiveness of the atonement. The way I've always presented to people is, it's a difference between real atonement, and no atonement.

Did Christ actually atone for anyone, or not? Did he actually save anyone, or not? Okay, listen to Romans chapter 8. After describing the, the glorious, wonderful truth of unconditional predestination, and God's electing grace, the passage says in verse 31, What shall we say to these things?

If God is for us, who can be against us? Now, you need to ask yourself, What is the antecedent of the pronoun us, in that text? Well, it's all the people who were foreknown, and predestined, called, justified, and glorified.

In other words, none other than God's elect. If God is for us, meaning God's elect, who can be against us? Verse 32, He who did not spare his own son, but delivered him over for us all. Who is the us all here?

Well, the pronoun us all, has as its antecedent, the elect, still. Delivered him up for us all. How will he not also with him freely give us all things? What is the antecedent of us? The elect. Verse 33, who will bring a charge against God's elect?

There, it's made even more clear. God is the one who justifies. Who is he who condemns? Christ Jesus is he who died, yea, rather who is raised, who is at the right hand of God, who also intercedes for us.

Who is the us? What is the antecedent, contextually, grammatically, of us? The elect. The elect. Who will separate us from the love of Christ? Who is the us? Again, follow the pronouns, follow the antecedent.

Who is the us? The elect. Who will separate us from the love of Christ? And so forth and so on. It's wonderful stuff. It's some of the most comforting and magnificent, glorious stuff anyone could ever even think about.

The Council Fathers go on, this is the end of point number of this article, number seven, of Rejecting the Errors of Those Who Teach. They also contradict the Savior, who asserts, I lay down my life for the sheep, in John 10 15.

And my command is this, love one another as I have loved you. Greater love has no one than this, that one lay down his life for his friends. And who are the friends of Christ? Who are the friends of Christ?

The friends of Christ are the sheep. And why did Jesus' opponents not believe in him? Why did they not believe? Because they were not of his sheep. So there you have the end of the second main point of doctrine.

The Armenians really were, in the final analysis, rejecting the whole idea of a real penal substitutionary atonement. Now in hopefully some future episodes, we're going to go into some of the teachings of John Miley, and we're going to look at B .B. Warfield's critique of Miley.

There's a really great book called The Lion of Princeton about the life of B .B. Warfield, who was the great Princeton theologian and invented the word inerrancy. Warfield is one of my favorite theologians because he's so clear and incisive.

But Dr. Kim Riddlebarger did his doctoral dissertation on Warfield, and that book, it's available on Kindle, and I've been reading through the section on Arminianism and making highlights and making notes because I want to bring up some of the things that John Miley, who was an Arminian systematician, an Arminian systematic theologian, some of the things that he says and some of the things that Warfield points out.

Because the main thing that Warfield brings forward, he says, the thing that makes John Miley's two-volume systematic theology, Miley the Arminian theologian, the thing that makes that systematic theology so helpful is that Miley very carefully points out and documents why Arminianism is not compatible with Reformation thinking at all.

Now, there are so many today who want to be considered to be evangelicals, you know, Roger Olson, who is an Arminian. In fact, I read his book, Arminian Theology, Myths and Realities. A friend gave it to me, and I forced myself to read the whole book.

But he was all upset because the Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals did not invite him to be part of their group. And the point that the Alliance made is that Arminianism can't be evangelical. It is not consistent with the biblical doctrine of grace.