Theopedia

Arminianism

Arminianism is a system of Protestant theology, named for the Dutch pastor and theologian Jacobus Arminius, holding that God elects individuals to salvation on the ground of his foreknowledge of their faith, that Christ died for all people without exception, that saving grace can be resisted, and that a believer’s perseverance depends on continuing to cooperate with grace rather than being secured by God alone. It is a minority report within confessing Protestantism, not a denial of the Christian faith, and today underlies Methodism and much of the wider evangelical tradition.

Historical Origin

Jacobus Arminius (1560-1609) taught theology at the University of Leiden from 1603 until his death. Doubts he first raised while defending the Reformed doctrine of predestination against its critics developed, over the course of his career, into a distinct alternative to the Calvinism of the Dutch Reformed churches.1 The theology that bears his name was not fully worked out in his own lifetime. It took shape after his death, when forty-six of his followers, led by Johannes Uitenbogaert and Simon Episcopius, met at Gouda in 1610 and drew up a Remonstrance against the Belgic Confession’s Calvinism, stating their position in five articles: conditional election, universal atonement, human inability apart from grace paired with a resistible prevenient grace, and a fifth article left undecided on whether a believer could finally fall away.1 (See Five articles of Remonstrance for the text and Jacobus Arminius for his life.)

A 1611 conference at the Hague between six representatives of each side failed to resolve the dispute.1 In 1618-19 the Reformed churches met at Dordrecht, presided over by Johannes Bogerman, to examine the Remonstrant articles against Scripture and against the Reformed confessional tradition. The Synod of Dort rejected the five articles and issued the Canons of Dort in response. Richard Muller, quoted in Barrett, sums up the verdict: Dort judged that “Arminian doctrines were clearly beyond the bounds of Reformed confessional orthodoxy,” condemning “predestination grounded on prior human choice,” denying “a grace that is both resistible and acceptable by man,” and affirming instead the depth of original sin, a limited efficacy of Christ’s satisfaction, and the perseverance of the elect by grace alone.2 (See Synod of Dordt.)

Arminian theology survived the Synod’s censure in the ongoing Remonstrant Brotherhood in the Netherlands, and reentered English-speaking Protestantism through John Wesley (1703-1791), who built Methodism on a modified form of the position: total depravity paired with a universal, resistible prevenient grace, rather than the differing account of human ability some later Remonstrants would give.3 The dispute continued in England well into the eighteenth century. The Particular Baptist theologian John Gill wrote The Doctrine of the Saints’ Final Perseverance, Asserted and Vindicated (1752) against Wesley’s own Serious Thoughts upon the Perseverance of the Saints (1751), which had argued that “those who are holy or righteous in the judgment of God himself… may nevertheless so fall from God as to perish everlastingly.”4

Core Tenets

Classical Arminianism states its position in the five articles of the 1610 Remonstrance.

Conditional election. God elects to salvation those he foresees will freely believe and persevere, rather than choosing unconditionally by his own decree alone. Arminius grounded this in his account of the will’s remaining freedom after the fall: unregenerate persons, he wrote, retain “freedom of will, and a capability of resisting the Holy Spirit, of rejecting the proffered grace of God, of despising the counsel of God against themselves, of refusing to accept the Gospel of grace, and of not opening to Him who knocks at the door of the heart.”5

Universal atonement. Christ died for every person without exception, though the benefit of his death reaches only those who believe. The 1610 Remonstrance put the point this way: “Jesus Christ, the Saviour of the world, died for all and every man, so that he impetrated for all through his death reconciliation and remission of sins, nevertheless on this condition, that no one should have actual fruition of that reconciliation, unless he is a believer.”6

Total depravity and prevenient grace. Classical Arminianism, the form associated with both Arminius and Wesley, affirms that fallen human beings can do no truly good thing, including believe, by their own natural power. It holds, however, that God’s Spirit extends a universal grace, commonly called prevenient or “preventing” grace, that repairs the will’s capacity to respond to the gospel before any person believes, so that the decisive response remains the sinner’s own. Wesley, who built Methodist theology on this premise, described the resulting freedom as a matter of use rather than possession: “no man sins because he has not grace, but because he does not use the grace which he hath.”7

Resistible grace. Because prevenient and saving grace work by persuading rather than efficaciously causing the will’s response, they can be, and according to Arminian theology often are, refused. As Richard Muller describes the Remonstrants’ own fourth article, quoted in Barrett, “prevenient and subsequent assisting grace may be resisted and rejected: ultimately the work of salvation, in its efficacy and application, rests on human choice.”8

Perseverance held open, not denied. The Remonstrance itself left the question whether a true believer could finally fall away undecided, pending further study of Scripture, rather than asserting it outright. Wesley later argued for the affirmative, teaching that even a believer marked by real, Spirit-given holiness “may nevertheless so fall from God as to perish everlastingly.”4

Comparison with the Reformed Baptist Confession

The 1689 Second London Baptist Confession states, against conditional election, that God has chosen the elect in Christ “without any other thing in the creature as a condition or cause moving him thereunto,” and that his decree does not rest on his having “foreseen [anything] as future, or as that which would come to pass upon such conditions.”9 Where Arminianism grounds election in foreseen faith, the confession grounds it solely in God’s “eternal and immutable purpose, and the secret counsel and good pleasure of his will.”10

Against a universal prevenient grace that repairs fallen ability in every person, the confession’s chapter on free will teaches that “man, by his fall into a state of sin, hath wholly lost all ability of will to any spiritual good accompanying salvation,” so that “a natural man… is not able, by his own strength, to convert himself, or to prepare himself thereunto.”11 Where the fallen will is renewed at all, the confession locates that renewal not in a grace given to all but in the special, effectual work described in its chapter “Of Effectual Calling”: the call is “of God’s free and special grace alone, not from any thing at all foreseen in man, nor from any power or agency in the creature, coworking with his special grace, the creature being wholly passive therein.”12 Arminian prevenient grace enables a response that stays uncertain; the confession’s effectual calling determines it: sinners are drawn “effectually,” yet “so as they come most freely, being made willing by his grace.”13 Bavinck states the difference this way: the Arminian emphasis on the universality of saving grace “made human beings the final arbiters of their own destiny.”14

Against the Remonstrance’s undecided fifth article and Wesley’s later affirmative answer to it, the confession teaches that those God has effectually called and sanctified “can neither totally nor finally fall from the state of grace, but shall certainly persevere therein to the end, and be eternally saved,” their perseverance resting “not upon their own free will,” but upon “the immutability of the decree of election,” the “merit and intercession” of Christ, and “the nature of the covenant of grace.”15 16 (See Perseverance of the saints for the confession’s position stated in full, and Effectual calling and Monergism for the calling side of the same disagreement.)

Variants

Arminian theology has never been a single position on how far human ability extends without grace. Arminius and Wesley both held what can be called a God-initiated synergism: the fall is real and total, and only a prior, universal act of grace lifts the will enough to cooperate with the gospel or resist it.3 A second strand, associated with the Remonstrant theologian Philip Limborch in the seventeenth century and with modern Arminians such as Jack Cottrell and Clark Pinnock, denies that Scripture teaches any such prevenient grace: sin wounds but does not disable the will, which retains a native capacity to initiate a response to God’s offer on its own. The first strand shares affinities with the semi-Augustinian synthesis of the Middle Ages; the second stands closer to the Semi-Pelagianism Augustine opposed.17

Wesleyan Arminianism, the form transmitted through Methodism, is further marked by its account of the “intermediate state” prevenient grace produces in an as-yet-unconverted sinner: a work that is neither mere unregeneracy nor full regeneration, leaving the sinner able, but not yet certain, to respond.18

Related Doctrines

Calvinism is the confessional Reformed position Arminianism most often stands against, formally rejected as such at the Synod of Dordt and stated point by point in the Five articles of Remonstrance and the answering TULIP. The underlying dispute over human ability is treated at Free will and Libertarian free will; the grace at issue is Prevenient grace; and the doctrines contrasted section by section above are Election, Predestination, Effectual calling, Monergism, Synergism, Universal atonement, Limited atonement, Irresistible grace, and Perseverance of the saints. Jacobus Arminius and John Wesley are its founding figures, Arminius as originator and Wesley as the theologian who carried the position into Methodism.

References

  1. Matthew Michael Barrett, “Monergism in the Calvinist Tradition,” in “Reclaiming Monergism: The Case for Sovereign Grace in Effectual Calling and Regeneration” (PhD diss., The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, 2011), 21-87. ↩ ↩2 ↩3

  2. Barrett, “Monergism in the Calvinist Tradition,” 73, quoting Richard Muller, “Arminius and Arminianism,” 34-35. ↩

  3. Matthew Michael Barrett, “Introduction,” in “Reclaiming Monergism: The Case for Sovereign Grace in Effectual Calling and Regeneration” (PhD diss., The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, 2011), 1-20. ↩ ↩2

  4. Steven Tshombe Godet, “Gill’s Context, Life, and Works,” in “The Trinitarian Theology of John Gill (1697-1771): Context, Sources, and Controversy” (PhD diss., The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, 2015), 11-81, quoting John Wesley, Serious Thoughts Upon the Perseverance of the Saints (London, 1751), 4. ↩ ↩2

  5. Barrett, “Introduction,” 1-20, quoting James Arminius, “Certain Articles to Be Diligently Examined and Weighed,” in The Writings of James Arminius, trans. James Nichols (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1956), 2:497. ↩

  6. Archibald Alexander Hodge, Outlines of Theology (New York: Robert Carter and Brothers, 1879), chap. 25, “Atonement,” quoting Remonstrantia, the 1610 five articles of the Dutch advocates of universal redemption, art. 2. ↩

  7. Matthew Michael Barrett, “Arminian Synergism in Theological Perspective,” in “Reclaiming Monergism: The Case for Sovereign Grace in Effectual Calling and Regeneration” (PhD diss., The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, 2011), 253-316, quoting John Wesley, “On Working Out Our Own Salvation,” 6:512. ↩

  8. Barrett, “Monergism in the Calvinist Tradition,” 72-73, quoting Richard Muller, “Arminius and Arminianism,” 34-35. ↩

  9. The Second London Baptist Confession of Faith (1689), chap. 3, “Of God’s Decree,” para. 2, text as transcribed by the Christian Classics Ethereal Library (the1689confession.com and other confession-text sites were unreachable from this session). ↩

  10. The Second London Baptist Confession of Faith (1689), chap. 3, para. 5. ↩

  11. The Second London Baptist Confession of Faith (1689), chap. 9, “Of Free Will,” para. 3. Text confirmed against multiple independent transcriptions (the1689confession.com, reformedreader.org, lbcf1689kjv.com). ↩

  12. The Second London Baptist Confession of Faith (1689), chap. 10, “Of Effectual Calling,” para. 2. ↩

  13. The Second London Baptist Confession of Faith (1689), chap. 10, “Of Effectual Calling,” para. 1, text as reproduced by The 1689 Confession. ↩

  14. Herman Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics: Abridged in One Volume, ed. John Bolt (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2011), chap. 9, “The Triune God and His Counsel.” ↩

  15. The Second London Baptist Confession of Faith (1689), chap. 17, “Of the Perseverance of the Saints,” para. 1, text as transcribed by the Christian Classics Ethereal Library. ↩

  16. The Second London Baptist Confession of Faith (1689), chap. 17, para. 2. ↩

  17. Barrett, “Introduction,” 1-20. ↩

  18. Barrett, “Arminian Synergism in Theological Perspective,” 253-316. ↩