Introduction⤒🔗

The biblical doctrine of man's total inability with regard to his own salvation has always had its opponents. In a way this is to be expected, because no truth is more humiliating than the truth of our deep fall and consequent total depravity. The first major opponent of this doctrine was Pelagius, who maintained that we are capable of obedience, even though we are fallen. God raised up and equipped Augustine with the grace of wisdom to oppose this heretic; however, it did not uproot the heresy of Pelagius. Through the ages Pelagianism has come up in different forms, each perhaps more subtle and malicious, as if the prince of darkness is continually improving his "spiritual arsenal" as time marches on. The Roman Catholic Church gradually espoused the doctrine of semi-Pelagianism, which was exposed, through the grace of God, by the men of the Reformation.

After that period, it appeared in one of its most malicious forms by its chief promoter, James Arminius, who basically taught that we "are free to believe." He also was not the last corrupter of the biblical teachings of man's total inability. In the more recent past, men such as Charles Finney, who denied again that man is depraved by nature, as well as the dispensationalist Lewis Chafer, who freely taught that man is able to believe, have sown corruption in the field of the biblical doctrine of man's total inability.

In this article, we propose to cover briefly the teachings of "free-will" as they were introduced by James Arminius.

Free-will before and after the fall←⤒🔗

When God created man, He created him able to serve Him voluntarily. In other words, in our creation we had the possibility of sinning, but not the necessity of sinning. The great theologian Augustine said, "In creation, man had both the ability to sin and the ability not to sin." In this state of perfection it was easy for man not to sin, because the Lord had made man fully qualified and equipped to withstand the temptation of sin.

It is important to note that at the moment Adam fell, he did not lose his will. What has changed with regard to our will is that the will has absolutely lost its ability to choose the right. Since the fall, our will has voluntarily entered into a state of bondage to evil. To quote Augustine, "It was by the evil use of his free-will that man destroyed both it and himself. For, as a man who kills himself must, of course, be alive when he kills himself, but after he has killed himself ceases to live and cannot restore himself to life; so, when man by his own free-will sinned, then sin being victorious over him, the freedom of his will was lost, 'For of whom a man is overcome, of the same is he brought in bondage' (2 Peter 2:19)."

Even though man's will is now in total bondage to evil, let us never forget that we are "freely in bondage," or "voluntary slaves" as long as we are unregenerate. The servant of sin serves his master willingly! As fallen sinners we sin because we choose to sin and not because we are forced to sin. We are free to act according to our own desires, but since we fell, our desires are only evil. We have willingly become slaves to our own corrupt will.¹

To sum it up, after the fall, we freely sin, but have lost our freedom (ability) not to sin.

Arminianism and man's free-will←⤒🔗

Within the scope of this article, I cannot delve deeply into the doctrines of Arminius. Important to the question at hand is Arminius' teaching that "fallen man is free to be saved or not to be saved depending on the exercise of his free-will." It may be somewhat surprising that Arminius rejected the teachings of Pelagius with respect to the results of the fall. He declared, regarding the fall of man, "In this state, the free-will of man toward the true good is not only wounded, maimed, infirm, bent, and weakened; but it is also imprisoned, destroyed, and lost." Arminius declared that the only remedy for man's fallen condition is the gracious operation of God's Spirit.

Thus far we can agree. But now in his teaching comes the refined error which is a malicious assault on the doctrine of total depravity.

In simple terms, Arminius taught that God has on the basis of Christ's work removed "original sin" from every person. He referred to this as "irresistible prevenient grace."² This grace, which is one-sided and irresistible (true!), is sufficient for a man to be saved, but not efficient (false!).³ This prevenient grace effectively liberates the sinner from his moral bondage or impotency. In other words, prior to this gift of prevenient grace, man is utterly dead and unable to choose the right. After the application of "prevenient" grace, the sinner is able to do what he was previously unable to do. Final salvation, according to Arminius, now becomes merely an issue of "Are you willing or not willing to be saved?"

If you re-read the former paragraph, then you will notice that Arminius did not altogether deny one-sided and irresistible grace. However, he limits it only to the liberation of the will in bondage. As a result of that liberation, man has now the ability to be saved if he is willing. Here he differs sharply from Augustine and from the Reformed view, which on the basis of Scripture hold that one-sided and irresistible grace does not only make the sinner able to will but willing to will. God's irresistible regenerating grace changes the will of fallen man in such a manner that he becomes willing in the day of His power.⁴

Issue of justice←⤒🔗

How did Arminius come to these twisted and mixed presentations of prevenient grace and the effects on man's fallen will? It may well have been Arminius' attempt to defend the justice of God in condemning those "who believe not." Scripture makes it abundantly clear that the "unbeliever" has no excuse and will be condemned because of his unbelief (Mark 16:16; John 3:18, 36; Acts 13:46; Hebrews 3:19 through 4:3). However, Scripture also makes it very clear that "faith is the gift of God" (Ephesians 2:8). No man is able to give himself the grace of repentance and faith. In other words, we are unable to do what God calls us to do.

To support the thought that this is how Arminius may have come to his erroneous and greatly misleading teaching, let me share this quote from his writing: "Sufficient grace (i.e., prevenient grace) must necessarily be laid down; yet this sufficient grace, through the fault of him to whom it is granted, does not always obtain its effect. Were the fact otherwise, the justice of God could not be defended in His condemning those who do not believe."⁵ In my own words, Arminius taught that if we teach that God gives every man sufficient grace in order to be saved, then it is not difficult anymore to understand how God can justly condemn those who refuse to use this grace well in order to be saved. Perhaps this removed for him the ^"unresolvable tensions" within the Word of God, such as the call to repent and believe versus total depravity.

The issue of God's justice, however, must not be connected to our inability as a "sad reality," but always to our inability as a "rebelliously self-induced condition." It may be suggested that therefore our fathers, in rebutting Arminius' teachings, began as they did in the Canons of Dort: on the bottom of the valley! Head I, Article 1, opens as follows: "As all men have sinned in Adam, lie under the curse, and are deserving of eternal death, God would have done no injustice by leaving them all to perish, and delivering them over to condemnation on account of sin."

To conclude←⤒🔗

Perhaps it could be said that Arminius developed his "theology" to defend God's justice to condemn unbelievers under the call of the gospel. He failed entirely, as we all do, when we do not think out of the Word of God. Through this effort he has been effectively used by the prince of darkness to lead countless multitudes fatally astray.

When we begin to think about the Word of God, we can never reason it through. But if we may learn to simply think as God reveals Himself in the Scriptures, we will become silent before Him. Then the fault of our fall and the fault of our continued fallen state lies with us, because God is not obligated to restore to us those divine gifts of which we have deprived ourselves (Heidelberg Catechism, Question 9).

Our only hope is not God's sufficient grace but God's efficient grace. Where we have closed forever the door from our side, God has in His sovereign grace opened one from His side. If we are at "the bottom of the valley," then the doctrine of God's one-sided, efficacious grace is the "gate of possibility."