This article is taken from a chapter in Hoodwinked and Happy?: Evangelicals, Calvinism , and Why No One’s Answering the Problem of Evil, by Daniel Gracely, published by Grandma’s Attic Press, © 2006.

Please note that the author of this article is not an Arminian, but that we have made the article available because it has some good material related to the Arminian/Calvinist debate. SEA does not necessarily endorse everything in the article.

Please click on the attachment to view Daniel Gracely, "Proverbs 21:1".

This article is taken from a chapter in Hoodwinked and Happy?: Evangelicals, Calvinism , and Why No One’s Answering the Problem of Evil, by Daniel Gracely, published by Grandma’s Attic Press, © 2006.

Please note that the author of this article is not an Arminian, but that we have made the article available because it has some good material related to the Arminian/Calvinist debate. SEA does not necessarily endorse everything in the article.

Please click on the attachment to view Gracely, Daniel. "Job 1-2"

“Consider the words of Christ to the church at Thyatria [sic.] concerning the prominent woman referred to as ‘Jezebel’ and His servants, who were practicing immorality and pagan customs, doubtless in a religious context after the manner of the cults:

“I have a few things against you, because you allow that woman Jezebel, who calls herself a prophetess, to teach and to seduce my servants to commit fornication and to eat things sacrificed to idols. And I gave her space to repent of her fornication, and she repented not. Behold I will cast her into a bed, and them that commit adultery with her into great tribulation, except they repent of their deeds. (Rev. 2:20-22)”

The subject of the Will of God was a topic of interest for James Arminius. Many have wondered if he was a Molinist. Richard Muller acknowledges that Arminius read from Molina,1 but Arminius never claimed to be a Molinist.

However, Arminius left in his writings the notion that perhaps he was at least influenced by Molina's pattern of thought on what God knows and what God has willed according to that knowledge. Muller noted

The divine knowledge of possibility, since it is knowledge of what things can come into existence, is also a knowledge of the way in which all possibles could exist ideally or perfectly, without defect and a knowledge of impossibility as well. Arminius even argues an order in the divine knowledge of possibles. Thus God knows, first, 'what things can exist by his own primary act.'

Monergism.com admitted, "It should be noted that this position [that of Compatibilism] is no less deterministic than hard determinism ~ be clear that neither soft nor hard determinism believes man has a free will." So, the Arminian is not misrepresenting the view of Compatibilists in admitting the same.

For the Compatibilist, the major contention for a libertarian view of human freedom is reduced to a matter of genuine choices. If God foreknew what a person would choose (and we are not speaking of choosing Christ at this point), and only what God foreknows is actually going to happen, then how can one admit that the human being has any real choices? What happens, happens necessarily.

It is no secret that the majority of Arminians hold to what is known as libertarian free will. We believe in such a thing because we see evidence for it throughout the Bible. God gives men and women options from which to choose and calls for them to choose wisely. Many times rewards and punishments, respectively, are distributed according to the choice one makes.

According to the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, "Compatibilism offers a solution to the free will problem." The Arminian, however, is unaware of any problem. But I digress. "This philosophical problem concerns a disputed incompatibility between free will and determinism. Compatibilism is the thesis that free will is compatible with determinism. Because free will is taken to be a necessary condition of moral responsibility, compatibilism is sometimes expressed in terms of a compatibility between moral responsibility and determinism."

In spite of J. I. Packer's allegation that John Wesley was a Calvinist,1 albeit an inconsistent one, Packer himself dodges inconsistency by appealing to antinomy regarding the relationship between God's sovereignty and humanity's free will. Granted, all Christians aim for a consistent theology. And there are verses in Scripture that, most likely, make all systematic theologians squirm. But, in my opinion, Arminianism comes out on top regarding consistency in theology.

Walls and Dongell comments, "There is one version of Calvinism that can clearly be held without contradiction. This is the view that holds with open-eyed consistency that God not only knows the future completely but also controls it in every detail because he has determined everything that will ever happen. Whether he does this by constant direct management or whether he arranged the world in the beginning in such a way that things would inevitably unfold in a particular way does not matter.

The content of this post was authored by Ben Henshaw and is posted on his behalf.

Sometimes Calvinists will say that Arminians have a small God. I have been told by Calvinists that the Calvinist God is “bigger” and therefore superior to my “little” Arminian God. Usually this claim is framed within the context of whether or not God can truly “save” anyone in an Arminian framework. Since the Arminian believes that God requires the genuine response of faith on the part of His creatures, then He is apparently quite small compared to the Calvinist God who just overpowers His creatures with His grace and makes sure that they are saved, etc. etc…you get the point.