Can an Arminian affirm Salvation by Grace alone(through faith alone)?

At first glance, this seems a silly question (and it is), since Arminians explicitly affirm this. But there is pushback from both Calvinists and ..for want of a better term..  Spurgeonists.

So I thought it might be good to set this out properly. Arminians(especially Weslyans) tend to think of salvation relationally, not causually. We operate in a relational world, not a dry cause - effect world. We often feel that the dry cause-effect view is an import of pagan philosophy into Christianity, but all truth is God's truth, so let us play in the cause-effect sand pit, and see if it is valid for an Arminian to affirm salvation is all of grace and the cause of salvation is grace.

Something to think about as you read this. 

Don't be confused here, I am not talking about the will(free or otherwise), I am speaking in the future tense. So the sentence "the sun will rise tomorrow" does not express my "willingness" for the sun to rise tomorrow. This is a flaw in English. For clarity, in this article, "will not" merely reflects the future tense. "Can not" reflects inability or impossibility.

If I can not do something it follows that I will not be doing it, regardless of my desire.
However, if I will not in the future be doing something it does not follow that I can not do it.
Illustrated with a simple example:
I can not flap my arms and fly to the moon, so it will not happen, no matter my desire for it to.
I am not going to get into my car and drive to the shops, I can (I have a car, petrol, time, etc) because I have the capability to do so, but the cause of me not doing so is not my inability to do so. I don't do it because I don't desire to do it, so it will not happen.

To assume that because I will not do something, I therefore can not do that thing is what is known as the fallacy of affirming the consequent. It is both formally and intuitively false.

Let's start with a thought experiment. 

For the sake of argument let us take total inability out of the equation. Let us assume man could, unaided turn to God from his sin. Now, remember, we don't believe this, we're just examining a claim.
Secondly, lets assume God provides no grace.

Could man be saved under these conditions?

The answer is obviously a resounding no. Man can want to be saved until he is blue in the face, but without grace, he can not be saved. It is not merely that he will not(future tense, not willingness) be saved for some other reason, it is impossible.

A Spurgeonist suggested to me that this was true the other way around for Arminians. In other words, if there were grace but no ability to repent then man can not be saved. Huh? That's no Arminian teaching.

God can absolutely save a man in the way the Calvinists (or in this case Spurgeonist) think. He is absolutely capable of doing so to the final degree. I can not emphasize this enough: Grace is the only thing in this that is necessary. God can not save without grace, for the very act of saving is Grace by any definition. Why would a Spurgeonist think Arminians think that God's grace is not sufficient? The only system in which grace is insufficient is semi-Pelegi... Oh... Right. He is operating on the assumption that Arminians are semi-Pelegianists. Now it all makes sense.

The argument in that God graciously (for any choice given by God is nothing less than an act of Grace) gives us a choice means He can not save without our consent is false. However He will not save without our consent, not because He is limited in some way, but because that is His sovereign choice. If it were not His choice, we would be saying that God is obligated or necessitated to give us the choice, which is not what Arminians teach.

At the end of the day, the deciding factor in salvation is grace. It is the only factor that is necessary. Our consent might be specified as a condition by God, but without grace, our consent is meaningless. Without consent, God will not save, though He most certainly can.

"But if you make a choice aren't you adding to your salvation?"

Well, lets do another thought experiment to illustrate how silly an idea this is. Imagine I come to your house with a precooked meal. I offer you this meal. If you accept it, does the portion on the plate increase in size because you accepted it? If you reject it, does the portion decrease?

If you answer "yes" to either of those questions, I have to ask what your justification for that is? That simply isn't how things work.

Grace Upon Grace

So, in conclusion can Arminians affirm salvation is grace alone? Yes, absolutely. John Wesley spoke of this. Grace at the first Grace at the last. Salvation is all of Grace, since even the very choice we are given is Grace.

Are Arminians correct in asserting that they add nothing to their salvation? Absolutely.

What is the Spurgeonist's confusion then? Simply this, he has failed to distinguish certainty from necessity, and further has failed to distinguish work from surrender.

Note that I used the terms "consent" or "make a choice" above for the sake of argument, but Arminians see it more of a yielding or surrender to God.

As usual, comments are welcome, but I reserve the right not to publish any I deem not consistent with the spirit of dialog and charity.

John McArthur loses all credibility with me.

In this video we see John McArthur display his ignorance of Arminian theology. We'll go through it in a minute, but it is quite clear to anyone that has actually picked up, say Arminias' declaration of sentiments, that McArthur is way off. Other Calvinists like R.A Muller for example, actually study these things and know that McArthur is wrong.

There are two possibilities why he is way off in his assessment - either he has never read Arminias, and is taking what he truly believes to be Arminian theology from some other (likely Calvinist source), or he is deliberately slandering his brothers and sisters in Christ. I'll go with the former, out of charity, however this still makes him a lazy thinker and casts doubt on anything else he says.

Firstly, the Armenian church is Eastern Orthodox, and their soteriology is, in keeping with the early church, far closer to Arminias than Calvin. So half points on at least being able to differentiate between the state and a theology.

"Arminias was an ancient theologian who believed that salvation was in the hands of the sinner and not God"
Nonsense. Arminias was no more ancient than Calvin, and believed no such thing. Being a reformer, 

Arminias was quite comfortable with Sola Fide.

"Arminias taught that salvation is by the will of man."

I challenge anyone to go through Arminias' works and come to that conclusion or find a statement like that. It is simply false.

"...Man has the ability to believe on his own... there is enough grace.."
Well, which is it McArthur? If it is grace, it is not man on his own. If it is man on his own, then there is no grace. You're not even making sense at this point.

"..but you do know perhaps about Charles Finney..."
Aha! Now we see where you get this nonsense from. Charles Finney is not in agreement with Arminias or Wesley. He is not a source for Arminianism. Arminias is. If you can be bothered to go read about an Presbytarian Semi-Pelegian but not the actual source of the theology, there is something deeply wrong about your approach.

Pelegias and Arminias did not teach the same thing. Else, Dort was a gigantic waste of time. It makes no sense to go to all that trouble to have your little local church council to declare Arminias apostate if he was already declared so with Pelegias. Sloppy thinking.

"..while we would agree that arminias taught a wrong view.. a heretical view.."
Ummm. No, he did not. Unless you belong to the Dutch Reformed Church (the only church Dort has authority over), Arminias' view is not Heretical and in fact has never been declared such by the catholic (small c - meaning universal, not RCC) church, then no, you have no basis for calling his view heretical. Finney, yes. Arminias no. It would be surprising if Arminias' view was ever declared heresy given that it was the predominant view of the church fathers, with the lone exception of Augustine, who likely would not have embraced McArthur's calvinism.

No, McArthur, Arminians understand depravity. We agree with you on it. That is what differentiates us from Finney and Pelegius.

There is no call or excuse for someone with the popularity of John McArthur to blatantly misrepresent and slander (whether our of ignorance or not) his brothers and sisters in Christ. 

Who are you, oh man to Question ME?

I have had a number of congenial conversations with friendly (and not so friendly Calvinists). I don't mind discussing the issue, and I generally make it known that I consider them orthodox, even if they don't think the same as I do. We can agree to disagree. We likely both affirm at the end of the day that we are saved by grace through faith and not by works. As each of us sees our own view, it would be silly to boast in salvation, since it is Christ who does the work of Salvation. Yeah, call me a monergist (mono - one, erg - work: One Work - Christ's). My work for salvation? None. My ability to trust God without his grace? None. On these things we do actually agree.

Now I prefer to defend my view, but in fairness, I will expect you to justify yours. Often this winds up with my friendly opponent making an error. You see, Calvinism rightly understood affirms certain information and explanations are not granted to us. Certain questions have no answer, like, "Why is one chosen and not the other?" At this point(or later if you want to detour through "to glorify God"), one should say, "well, I don't know, but I trust God." Cry to uncle Mystery, I might not agree with you(I draw distinction between mystery and contradiction), but I'd rather we disagreed and left it at that than you wander off into vain philosophy.

Most Calvinists I know are fine with uncle Mystery. I am as well if it comes to that. How does the trinity work? Well, I don't think I can rightly describe it, there is mystery(not contradiction) here.

The second group, however, has a tendency to love their own reasoning. I sit and ask a simple set of questions, and they become increasingly agitated. Eventually it winds up with a bunch of machine gun hermeneutics and finally their "trump card". Romans 9:20: " But who are you, a human being, to talk back to God? “Shall what is formed say to the one who formed it, ‘Why did you make me like this?’”(NIV)

This is quite unimpressive. And frankly desperate. So, I write this post to explain why I don't immediately change my ways and agree with people who play that card.

Firstly, I am not questioning God I am questioning you.

Now don't get me wrong, I think it is OK to question God in certain contexts, but in this case, my questions are not directed at God, they're directed at you. There are two reasons your appeal to Romans 9:20 might move me.
1. You are actually God.
2. Your theology of God is infallible and complete, to the point where you can answer any question as God would.

Many people are so proud as to claim (2), but I find that it is not a position I would want to defend. I am human and God is not. Further, I obviously don't agree with your interpretations of scripture, and rather than get into that with me, you seek to shut me down by an appeal to an authority you do not have.

Secondly, you're doing violence to scripture quoting that at me (It is out of all context).

To fully address this, I would have to go through the entirety of Romans, however, others have done that far better than I, so if you ask, I'll point you to them. But I do want to address a bit of context here. Why does Paul write this?

First look at Acts 18:1-18. What we have here is a situation where the Jews had been kicked out of Rome. By the time Romans is written, some are back, (we know because Paul addresses them (and over external data)). Next look at Romans 9:1-5. Paul is speaking specifically to Jews and he is using a rhetorical device here. He is having an argument in the text with an imaginary Jew to illustrate something.

Why might a Jew be upset, as the one in the text so clearly is? Is it possibly because Jews considered their heritage - their link to Abraham - the source of their salvation. Jesus himself refutes this misconception (John 8:39-44 and on). But it appears there was friction in the Roman church between Jew and gentile. Not to get too deeply into it, but essentially Romans 9 is Paul arguing down a Jew who is upset that "saved by faith" has upset his worldview of being one of the only chosen people.

In other words, the Jew, who sees himself eternally secure because of his heritage, is being told, no, and God's word hasn't failed, and stop talking back to God, this is what God has done.

Read in context, I think the verse speaks more to a(type of, perhaps?) Calvinist who says "Only the elect, I am secure in my election, God's eternal decree" than the Arminian who says "Only Christ. I am elect and secure only in Christ".

I'm going to get a lot of flak for this view, but I believe it is the way the church saw it before Augustine, and I think they had the context and they're right on this one.

Conclusion
In order to use this passage to admonish me, you have to do a lot more work to show it actually applies to me, than to just rip it out of context and scream it at me.

Don't be surprised if it doesn't impress me when you just throw it down to try and silence the hard questions I may ask. If you want an out, I'll happily agree to disagree or point you towards mystery, but in throwing this one down makes you sound like you're desperately trying to convince yourself.

Hey, I'll call you brother even if we disagree on the implications of the context here - we're all human and fallible.

COMMENT RULES ** IF NOTHING ELSE, READ THIS.
As always, keep any comments respectful, and I reserve the right to not publish anything I feel violates the spirit of this blog and the principle of charity. Also, if you do not carefully read, at least the first paragraph where I affirm salvation by grace through faith and not works, and it becomes evident you didn't in your comment, don't wonder why I did not publish it.

What we get wrong about Sovereignity

Certain sections of modern Christians are absolutely fascinated with God's sovereignty. And by no means is God not sovereign, so don't get that wrong.

The English word "sovereign" refers simply to "a supreme ruler, especially a monarch.". If we want to  apply it as an adjective, it means "possessing supreme or ultimate power." And that is where we go off the rails. We see that word "power", and all sorts of lights go off in our heads. Picture in your head Jeremy Clarkson in some super-car screaming "MORE POWER".

I was told to imagine the sovereignty of say, David, or Solomon, say hundreds (or more) times more and that would be God. That, with respect is nonsense. David's kingship might be a picture in some way of God's kingdom, but you cannot get God's kingdom by making Davids kingdom "many times more".  Yet we see the word "power" and we think "God has infinite power, therefore God is infinitely sovereign". This is what is called an inference. We have done (somewhat poorly) logic to get here. We infer, that if a king has power, and God has more power, God is more sovereign than a king. This is because we love to compare things. Frankly because our God looks just like us fallen creatures to us, and also loves to do power comparisons.

In reality, these concepts are not as closely tied as we think. We're obsessed with power, and it is no surprise that we think only in terms of "who is stronger". And as a result we have reasoned ourselves into quite an absurd position where we are comparing God's power with David's power.


What is the distinguishing feature of sovereignty though? If I have a lot of raw power (many soldiers, and weapons), but I must answer to the Colonel and do as he says, am I sovereign? Obviously not. I must answer for what I do. If I use it badly, I was not sovereign  while using it badly, since I must still answer for how I used it.

So me having 100 more soldiers than Fred under my command does not affect my sovereignty in relation to Fred. Neither of us are sovereign, since firstly, neither of us are rulers and both of us must answer to Colonel Panic. Clearly the distinguishing feature of sovereignty is not raw power or force,  but to whom one answers. The meaning of God being sovereign is not He has more power (we have a word for that already -omnipotence), but that He does not answer to anyone - instead, all must answer to Him.

The difference between David and God? David answers to God, but God does not answer to David. It is not a matter of scale (100 times or a million times), but of Authority. Not raw power, but Authority. God is not many times David - God is God and David is not.

How then does God use his sovereignty?  Well, in John 14:9, Jesus affirms to Phillip that Jesus is the very representation of the Living God. If we know Jesus, we know God. How does Jesus use his authority then? Does he micromanage the disciple's lives? Is He ever disappointed in them, does He correct and teach them? Does God's sovereignty mean He is never disappointed, because He has all power and authority? The Bible shows us otherwise, we see God express deep sorrow over the world(the Bible uses the term regret, not that God wishes to take back His decision to create, but that He wishes to redeem fallen creation), and we see Jesus weep over Israel. We see in Isaiah 5, God ask(rhetorically) "What more could I have done?"

Might this not be, because God knows what humans have never grasped - raw power is not sufficient to get what you want. Perhaps God can no more force Israel to submit to him without violating his character than He can choose to cease to be God? 

Some people will suggest this makes God impotent, but that is nonsense. There are things God cannot do - He cannot sin, or lie, for example. He cannot be tempted. These things do not make him impotent.

Now, I am not saying here that God will fail, but I am saying that raw power is not why He wins. Had God's plan of salvation relied upon raw power, Jesus would have come in power and force. And sometimes that does mean mourning over the lost who will not heed him. Scriptures like Ezekiel 18:23 tell us plainly what God desires. Yet the wicked still perish. And if we think God is happy about that, we call Him liar.

Dispensing with Dispensationalism.

Dispensationalism is a hot topic. It's view of the end times is extremely popular, and many great and sincere Christians affirm it. This is not an attack on them, their theology or salvation, but it is an explanation of why I reject the doctrine. The Left Behind series of book really put the (s)ensationalism into dispensationalism. (ba dum tsssss)

In fairness I won't judge the doctrine by a set of popular speculative fiction novels. I know several dispensationalists who think those books are silly.

Dispensationalism is add odds with the Protestant reformation.
One of the ideas behind the reformation was that of ad fontes, or "to the source"(literally "fountain"). A return to the teaching of the Bible and a disregarding of the doctrinal cruft that had grown over the Roman Catholic Church. The reformation predates Dispensationalism by some 200 years, yet it unwittingly provided the environment for Dispensationalism to grow.

Don't get me wrong here - Dispensationalism is an attempt to return to Biblical teaching. A genuine, sincere and well meaning attempt. Yet it fails.

Me and my Bible vs Ad Fontes
When we approach the Bible, we come with out baggage. Our culture. Our philosophy, and our preconceptions. We can't help it - we are caught in the system and thus we see everything through the lens of the system. We are bubbled in our modern western materialistic and individualistic society. Me and my Bible is never just me and my Bible. It is me, my Bible, my Philosophy, my cosmology, my worldview, my opinions. This is why Atheists(and Christians) often distort the Bible to say things other than it does.

A return to the Bible that does not account for our bubble, is bound to corrupt the text. Thomas Oden's famous saying was he wanted to add nothing new to Christianity, yet dispensationalism is new. And I think that is because dispensationalism doesn't account for the bubble.

So how do we account for the bubble?

The Shoulders of Giants
The only way to account for the Bubble is to become aware of it. We desperately need to realise, as John Walton states: "The Bible is written for but not to us." This matters. 

The Bible was simply not written to our culture and philosophy, though it has immense value to our culture and philosophy. So, the question is, how do we separate the carrier from the signal? The carrier of the signal makes the signal transmission possible, but it itself is not the signal. In radio terms, we use a "demodulator" to perform this operation. We 'filter' the incoming signal through the demodulator, and we get the signal out the other side, carrier removed.

The writings of the Church fathers are of immense help here - if scripture is true, and unchanging, it follows it can never mean what it never meant, it should cause us to pause if, in the first 1800 years of the church, no Christian ever held our doctrine. This is the case with dispensationalism.

A genuine return ad fontes will not be at odds with consensus of the early church. Dispensationalism is.

Now there are a great many biblical arguments for and against dispensationalism, but I find it absent from the thought of the early church, the very people who were closest to the culture and context of the Bible did not see it as dispensationalism does.

Therefore, if I am to respect my Bible (i.e. take it seriously and have it mean what it means not what my culture wants it to mean, I cannot in good conscience be a dispensationalist.

This does not mean I think you're not Christian if you're dispensationalist, or that you're unbiblical or a bad person, just we disagree. In a future post, I may go into my eschatological conclusions, but suffice it to say, there is one thing we all agree on, Jesus is coming back.

As always, I reserve the right to not publish a comment, and comments should be respectful. I thank you kind readers for never having pushed me to the point where I had to remove or not publish any comment.

Why Knowledge is Just Knowledge.

Lets us do a thought experiment. Imagine, if you will you had a pretty sweet computer. Maybe one the size of a couple of solar systems - very powerful, lots of memory. Now, an important figure, say Donald Trump, was in a closed room last week. Imagine we used our computer to simulate everything in the room, down to the last quantum state. Our computer now "knows" everything about the room. Everything is certain.

Now, I don't like Donald Trump. So I log into a console and delete him from the simulated room.

Question time:
Does the real Donald Trump vanish from the room in the past? Why?

Remember, we're absolutely certain about the room, and everything in it. We know precisely and perfectly what will happen in that room for as long as we can run the simulation for.

Now, lets imagine God condescends to help us in our experiment. He comes down and reprograms the computer to show us a similar room, with say, Theresa May in it, this time in the future. I also decide to delete Theresa May. Does Theresa May vanish from the real room? If not why not?

The level of certainty we posses about an event is not causative, so in neither case will a world leader abruptly vanish from a locked room (ah, but for the way knowledge works, we could commit a crime even Sherlock Holmes could not solve!) Absolute certainty about an event does not make the event necessary, else we could manipulate an event by modifying our certainty about it. Knowledge and information are just that, knowledge and information. Nothing magical or mystical about it.

Now, there are two theories about how God's omnipotence and omniscience work. One suggests that God knows because he decrees (read causes), and the other says that God's knowledge is not causative -  He knows all (how, but not what is somewhat mysterious) because he created and sustains the universe. God knows how I will sin tomorrow, not because He caused me to sin (James 1:13), but because I will sin. The source of his knowledge need not be a eternal decree, but can be the event itself.

The common argument by a determinist(or a compatibilist) who does not get the distinction between certainty and necessity is that Arminians face the same conundrum as they do - Arminians affirm God knows the future perfectly -  thus, they think God's certainty about the future renders it necessary. This is an extraordinary claim. As our thought experiment above suggests, knowledge does not operate like this.

I anticipate the objection here - that God's knowledge is not like our (or for that matter our imaginary computer's) knowledge. This is true. But the leap from God's knowledge making all things certain for God, to God's knowledge rendering all things necessary has to be supported, and so far I have not heard a good scriptural(or logical, for that matter) reason for this. It does not come from scripture, it is a philosophical argument, and a rather bad one at that. The burden is on the one who claims that certainty and necessity are always the same thing to prove this. It is an extraordinary claim. And thus we would require some proof  for it. Or at the very least some reasoning, normally it comes out as a pure unsupported assertion.

Feel free to provide yours below, if you have such.

Note, that nowhere here do we deny God's sovereignty, or power. Nothing happens without His knowledge, allowance or plan in it. What we do deny is that God is a causative agent in sin. God certainly is active in creation, causing good things.

As always, I retain the right to decide what comments are posted, and only discussion that is respectful and polite is allowed. Please try to apply the Principle of Charity here.

When We Disagree. Rule 1: Don't assign a position to me I don't hold.

I have been called both explicitly and implicitly by a number of people "Catholic" in various places, and it is getting annoying.. The weird thing is, it wasn't ever meant as a complement. I mean those dirty papist Catholics are no good right?

Well, actually, most(if not all Catholics I have met) are well groomed and quite clean.

The trouble is, not only is calling insulting to me, it is demeaning to actual Catholics. You see, I don't agree with them, and there is a vast difference between my position and theirs. So, to lump them in with me, or me in with them is unfair.

This being said, I don't believe I have a monopoly on truth. Consider a trivial example; who amoung you gentle readers affirms the trinity: I see you there Mr Calvinist, you there Mr Lutheran and even you there Mr Catholic. We all agree on that, hey, what d'ya know. Just because the Catholic in the corner over there has a position, doesn't mean it is always wrong. If that were so, on that logic, we'd have to deny the trinity, since Catholics affirm it.

Guilt by association is plain silly. If we're gonna go the route of 'demonizing' whole groups and everything they believe in, we forget that all truth is God's truth, regardless of source.  How we discern truth is another story(by the standard of God's word interpreted in context), but a position held by someone we disagree with isn't automatically wrong, just because we disagree with them.

Realization of this simple fact should go long way to smoothing relations between Christians. Even them dirty papal scum... uh... the brainwashing. I blame the brainwashing, ok?

So, the first rule is, don't assign a position to someone that they won't own. If you want to think of me as Roman Catholic and refute me based on that, well, straw men burn easy, and you'll never change my mind, because you have never addressed my position. So you're basically just adding to and sowing division. Also you don't care enough about me to understand my position. I'll totally call you out on that, because that isn't Christian behavior by any biblical standard. If that upsets you there's not much I can do about that, but quit doing the devil's job for him, a'right?

Get that right and we're one step closer to either convincing one of us to change position, or agreeing to disagree like actual brothers in Christ, not the pagans in the marketplace screaming at each other over the price of chicken or the politics of the day.

(I'm not knocking Catholicism here, I just disagree with some of the positions they hold, but I can do so with respect. Raise your hand if you can too.)