Christian Heresy - Arminianism

Happy Valentine Day's Eve to everyone. I am blessed to have a wonderful woman as my wife, that is also my best friend, and who I continue to be attracted to, even after 18 years of marriage. I sometimes see at my work the pain of failed marriages, and the permanent scars that this causes in a person's life. So I count as one of my life's most important blessings the blessing of a happy marriage. Ok, so I have to share a quick story from this past week. This past week, my wife and I had a fight. It was so bad, that she told me to sleep on the couch, and when I did not, she slept on the couch herself. When I came home the next day, I tried to make amends by buying her chocolate, and making dinner for the family. But when I went upstairs to our bedroom, I was caught by a BIG surprise. Peggy was not home. But she pulled back the corner of the comforter on our bed, and there laying on the mattress was her wedding ring. I thought the message was clear, she had left me.

My initial reaction was one of anger – she would leave me over a simple fight? I was going to read her the riot act when she got home. How dare she! But as I thought about the pain of thinking she had left me, I thought that because I wanted her to forgive me for the previous night's fight, that I needed to unconditionally forgive her for removing her wedding ring. So when she finally came home I greeted her with a heart-felt hug and a kiss, and told her how glad I was to see her.

Now here's the kicker of the story – after the family ate dinner together, I sat down with her and I asked to see her hand. And the wedding ring was back where it belonged. When I asked her about why she removed her ring, she simply told me that she was retaining water, and removed it when she was sleeping. No message was intended, and she was not threatening to end our marriage. We laughed together when I explained what I thought when I saw the ring lying on our mattress. Anyway, just remember to not read too much into things, especially when it involves your spouse.

My topic today is to discuss a major Christian heresy – Arminianism. John MacArthur, perhaps the leading Protestant voice in America himself has ranked Arminianism as the third most important theological crisis that the North American Church is facing today. Article is here. So allow me to speak generally about this heresy, and perhaps we can learn together why it is so dangerous to today's Church.

Arminianism is a response to the hard to swallow John Calvin doctrine of pre-destination. Theopedia describes it as follows: Arminianism is a school of theology based on the teachings of Dutch theologian Jacob Arminius (1560-1609), for whom it is named. It is perhaps most prominent in the Methodist movement and found in various other evangelical circles today. It stands in contrast to Calvinism, with which it has a long history of debate…

The Arminian followers published something called a 'Remonstrance' which outlined these 5 Arminian beliefs of salvation:

1. On their own, humans can do nothing good;
   
2. Before the foundation of the world, God chose to save everyone who would freely choose to put their trust in Jesus;
   
3. Jesus died for everyone, but His death only redeems believers;
   
4. People can choose to reject God's attempts to save them;
   
5. Scripture does not clearly state whether believers can lose their salvation. (this summary is from 'Christian History Made Easy', Jones, p. 123.
   

The Calvinist response was to hold the Synod of Dort in 1618, which is where the Calvinist's articulated their 5 TULIP points of Calvinism. Arminianism was also condemned by the Synod.

I have previously been accused of being an Arminian, and so it is a topic I would like to spend more time learning about and discussing. So if anyone has any comments or explanations of Arminianism, I hope you will feel free to share them Thanks, and may God bless you abundantly this week. /s/Tom