[This article is a continuation of my previous article, Is God's election Unconditional? (Part I)]
___________
The Arminian version of election states that from eternity God elected those whom He foresaw will believe in his Son and persevere to the end by faith. This is perhaps the most popular Arminian view on election which is also called CONDITIONAL ELECTION. It says that God knew in advance those who will choose him, and on that basis he chose them.
Here is an excerpt from Brian Schwertley's Chosen of God in refutation to the Arminian concept of Conditional Election:
...How do Arminians justify their version of election (Conditional Election)? They do so with a peculiar interpretation of Romans 8:29.
___________
The Arminian version of election states that from eternity God elected those whom He foresaw will believe in his Son and persevere to the end by faith. This is perhaps the most popular Arminian view on election which is also called CONDITIONAL ELECTION. It says that God knew in advance those who will choose him, and on that basis he chose them.
Here is an excerpt from Brian Schwertley's Chosen of God in refutation to the Arminian concept of Conditional Election:
...How do Arminians justify their version of election (Conditional Election)? They do so with a peculiar interpretation of Romans 8:29.
- For those whom He HE HAS KNOWN BEFOREHAND He has also pre-destined to bear the likeness of His Son, that He might be the Eldest in a vast family of brothers; and those whom He has pre-destined He also has called; and those whom He has called He has also declared free from guilt (justified); and those whom He has declared free from guilt (justified) He has also crowned with glory. Romans 8:29-30 (Weymouth)
The word “foreknew” in this passage is said to simply mean that God knew something in advance. He knew before the foundation of the world who would believe and repent and on the basis of their actions God chose them. There are a number of reasons why the common “evangelical” (i.e. Arminian) understanding of Romans 8:29 is unscriptural and impossible.
The first reason is that the word “foreknow” or "to know beforehand" (pregno, aorist active indicative of proginosko) does not simply mean to have an intellectual knowledge of something before it happens. The word is an active verb, therefore, is not something done at just one point , but something God is doing.
The Ariminian idea that God looked down through time to see who would choose Him and then elected such persons implicitly denies the omnipotence and providence of God. If a human (a finite mortal) could look down the corridors of time he would have the ability to choose people on the basis of their faith or something they did. But God who controls and sustains every aspect of creation (even subatomic particles, bacteria, viruses and insects) is not an impartial observer. He both knows and controls. If He sees a man believe, He gave that man the gift of faith and preordained his salvation. Calvin writes:
Further, the word “foreknow” when used of God’s elect does not refer to a simple intellectual foresight or a knowing something cognitively before it happens, but rather refers to a selective knowledge which regards a person with favor and makes that person an object of love. In other words, in Romans 8:29 Paul uses “foreknow” in the Old Testament/Hebraistic sense of to love beforehand. John Murray writes:
Saint Luke also used the word "know" equivalent to "be intimately related with" as we read in Luke 1:34,
The first reason is that the word “foreknow” or "to know beforehand" (pregno, aorist active indicative of proginosko) does not simply mean to have an intellectual knowledge of something before it happens. The word is an active verb, therefore, is not something done at just one point , but something God is doing.
The Ariminian idea that God looked down through time to see who would choose Him and then elected such persons implicitly denies the omnipotence and providence of God. If a human (a finite mortal) could look down the corridors of time he would have the ability to choose people on the basis of their faith or something they did. But God who controls and sustains every aspect of creation (even subatomic particles, bacteria, viruses and insects) is not an impartial observer. He both knows and controls. If He sees a man believe, He gave that man the gift of faith and preordained his salvation. Calvin writes:
“Peter doth teach that God did not only foresee that which befell Christ, but it was decreed by him. And hence must be gathered a general doctrine; because God doth no less show his providence in governing the whole world, than in appointing the death of Christ. Therefore, it belongeth to God not only to know before things to come, but of his own will to determine what he will have done.” [John Calvin, Commentary upon the Acts of the Apostles (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1981), 1:97.]
Further, the word “foreknow” when used of God’s elect does not refer to a simple intellectual foresight or a knowing something cognitively before it happens, but rather refers to a selective knowledge which regards a person with favor and makes that person an object of love. In other words, in Romans 8:29 Paul uses “foreknow” in the Old Testament/Hebraistic sense of to love beforehand. John Murray writes:
Although the term “foreknow” is used seldom in the New Testament, it is altogether indefensible to ignore the meaning so frequently given to the word “know” in the usage of Scripture; “foreknow” merely adds the thought of “beforehand” to the word “know.” Many times in Scripture “know” has a pregnant meaning which goes beyond that of mere cognition. It is used in a sense practically synonymous with “love,” to set regard upon, to know with particular interest, delight, affection, and action (cf. Gen. 18:19; Exod. 2:25; Psalm 1:6; 144:3; Jer. 1:5; Amos 3:2; Hosea 13:5; Matt. 7:23; 1 Cor. 8:3; Gal. 4:9; 2 Tim. 2:19; 1 john 3:1)….It means “whom he set regard upon” or “whom he knew from eternity with distinguishing affection and delight” and is virtually equivalent to “whom he foreloved.” [John Murray, The Epistle to the Romans (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1959), 317.]
Saint Luke also used the word "know" equivalent to "be intimately related with" as we read in Luke 1:34,
- Then said Mary unto the angel, How shall this be, seeing I know not a man? Luke 1:34 (KJV)
Does the word "know" in the verse literally mean "to have knowledge of"? Obviously not! When the angel confronted Mary he already knew Joseph (Luke 1:27). The same is true with Romans 8:29. Those God "knew" (loved intimately) beforehand, he did predestinate. God therefore "foreknew" the persons, not anything they would do.
God’s electing love originates from Himself and not out of foreseen faith or repentance. Therefore, when the Bible discusses individual election, it always grounds it in God and not sinful, depraved humanity. Election is “according to His good pleasure” (Eph. 1:9). It is “after the counsel of His own will” (Eph. 1:11).
This interpretation of “foreknow” in Romans 8:29 is supported by the simple fact that if we accept the Arminian interpretation that God predestinated men whose future history He foreknew, then the term would prove something totally unbiblical. Why? Because God foreknows the history of every man, woman and child who ever did or will ever live. Thus, the text would teach universalism. No Arminian believes that everyone including Adolf Hitler and Joseph Stalin will go to heaven. It is obvious that Pol Pot, Al Capone and Heinrich Himler have not been predestined to be conformed to the image of Christ.
The Arminian will object to the observation above by stating, “You are misrepresenting my position. I believe that only those people that God foreknew would choose Jesus are the ones He predestined to life.” To this objection we ask one simple question. Where in the text of Scripture does it say this? One can read the Bible very carefully, cover to cover, and this statement or any like it cannot be found. “Where are the words you have added, ‘Whom he did foreknow to repent, to believe, and to persevere in grace’? I do not find them either in the English version or in the Greek original.” Sadly, Arminian theologians and interpreters are guilty of reading their own prejudices, presuppositions and humanistic traditions into the text of Scripture.
While the Arminian interpretation is very popular and appeals to our fleshly egos and our human autonomy, we must reject it because it has no exegetical basis in Scripture. We must “bow to holy Scripture… not to glosses which theologians may choose to put upon it. Since the Arminian interpretation contradicts Scripture, is not found in the text at all and is absurd we will choose the biblical and logical alternative: that the word “know” in this passage refers to God’s saving love and favor.
The Arminian interpretation that the word “know” is purely intellectual is decisively refuted by the immediate context of Romans 8:29. The context of Romans 8:29 does not teach that God chooses on the basis of what man will do in the future. Paul does not say that man is ultimately sovereign in salvation. He says the exact opposite. In Romans 8:30ff the apostle teaches that God’s love is not a passive, helpless love, that sits by and waits to see what sinful, lost, hopeless men will do; but rather the passage sets forth a sovereign active love, a love that nothing can impede, stop or override. Paul writes:
God’s electing love originates from Himself and not out of foreseen faith or repentance. Therefore, when the Bible discusses individual election, it always grounds it in God and not sinful, depraved humanity. Election is “according to His good pleasure” (Eph. 1:9). It is “after the counsel of His own will” (Eph. 1:11).
This interpretation of “foreknow” in Romans 8:29 is supported by the simple fact that if we accept the Arminian interpretation that God predestinated men whose future history He foreknew, then the term would prove something totally unbiblical. Why? Because God foreknows the history of every man, woman and child who ever did or will ever live. Thus, the text would teach universalism. No Arminian believes that everyone including Adolf Hitler and Joseph Stalin will go to heaven. It is obvious that Pol Pot, Al Capone and Heinrich Himler have not been predestined to be conformed to the image of Christ.
The Arminian will object to the observation above by stating, “You are misrepresenting my position. I believe that only those people that God foreknew would choose Jesus are the ones He predestined to life.” To this objection we ask one simple question. Where in the text of Scripture does it say this? One can read the Bible very carefully, cover to cover, and this statement or any like it cannot be found. “Where are the words you have added, ‘Whom he did foreknow to repent, to believe, and to persevere in grace’? I do not find them either in the English version or in the Greek original.” Sadly, Arminian theologians and interpreters are guilty of reading their own prejudices, presuppositions and humanistic traditions into the text of Scripture.
While the Arminian interpretation is very popular and appeals to our fleshly egos and our human autonomy, we must reject it because it has no exegetical basis in Scripture. We must “bow to holy Scripture… not to glosses which theologians may choose to put upon it. Since the Arminian interpretation contradicts Scripture, is not found in the text at all and is absurd we will choose the biblical and logical alternative: that the word “know” in this passage refers to God’s saving love and favor.
The Arminian interpretation that the word “know” is purely intellectual is decisively refuted by the immediate context of Romans 8:29. The context of Romans 8:29 does not teach that God chooses on the basis of what man will do in the future. Paul does not say that man is ultimately sovereign in salvation. He says the exact opposite. In Romans 8:30ff the apostle teaches that God’s love is not a passive, helpless love, that sits by and waits to see what sinful, lost, hopeless men will do; but rather the passage sets forth a sovereign active love, a love that nothing can impede, stop or override. Paul writes:
- Moreover whom He predestined, these He also called; whom He called, these He also justified; and whom He justified, these He also glorified. What then shall we say to these things? If God is for us, who can be against us? He who did not spare His own Son, but delivered Him up for us all, how shall He not with Him also freely give us all things? Who shall bring a charge against God’s elect? It is God who justifies. Who is he who condemns? It is Christ who died, and furthermore is also risen, who is even at the right hand of God, who also makes intercession for us. Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? As it is written: ‘For Your sake we are killed all day long; we are accounted as sheep for the slaughter.’ Yet in all these things we are more than conquerors through Him who loved us. For I am persuaded that neither death nor life, nor angels nor principalities nor powers, nor things present nor things to come, nor height nor depth, nor any other created thing, shall be able to separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord. Rom. 8:30-39 (NKJV)
The interpretation that foreknowledge is merely the recognition that certain people will exercise faith some time in the future—a faith that is solely dependent on man and that can fail at any time—simply contradicts Paul’s emphasis on God’s determinative action in salvation. Paul presents a chain of events, all of which are dependent solely upon God. Paul is teaching a monergistic doctrine of salvation. That salvation depends solely upon divine choice and action. Paul emphasizes that God is the one who predestinates, calls, justifies, and then glorifies. Furthermore, it is Christ who achieved an objective, perfect redemption; who intercedes at the right hand of God for His people (v. 34). The three actions (called, justified, and glorified) which inevitably flow from God’s eternal counsel cannot be separated. “The future glorification of the believer is designated by the aorist, as his justification, calling, predestination, and election have been; because all these divine acts are eternal, and therefore simultaneous for the divine mind. All are equally certain" (William G. T. Shedd, Romans, 266). Paul emphasizes that salvation is certain for the elect because “God is for us” (v. 31).
Salvation is guaranteed by God’s electing love and predestinating power. Such a doctrine is totally incompatible with the idea that everything boils down to the “free” choice of people who are “dead in trespasses and sins” (Eph. 2:1), who could lose their faith and salvation at any moment. Since it is God alone who saves, Paul can affirm that nothing created can separate the elect from God’s love (v. 39). Nothing created—not even man’s will—has the power over the elect’s final salvation. “He has shown how the present pilgrimage of the people of God falls into its place in that determinate and undefeatable plan of God that is bounded by two foci, the sovereign love of God in his eternal counsel and glorification with Christ in the age to come" (John Murray, Romans, 321). Girardeau writes:
Therefore, Christians can be “confident of this very thing, that He who has begun a good work in you will complete it until the day of Jesus Christ” (Phil. 1:6).
The Arminian interpretation of Romans 8:29 contradicts the biblical teaching that salvation is by the pure grace of God. If (as modern evangelicals assert) God’s predestination of the elect is based on something that men do such as faith and repentance, then ultimately conversion is not entirely a work of God’s grace. Faith and repentance are no longer gifts of God’s grace but are autonomous, self-generated acts of the human will. Men are no longer saved by or through faith (Rom. 3:22, 25, 28, 30; 5:1; Eph. 2:8) but rather because of faith. According to the Arminian interpretation “it is not God and God alone who works salvation…the actual enjoyment of salvation hangs at a decisive point upon something in man, or something done by man.”
Martin Luther repudiates the idea that God cannot save man unless man allows Him to dispense His grace. In his exposition of 1 Peter 1:2 he writes:
Further, Romans 9:11-18 makes it abundantly clear that election has nothing to do with what we do and everything to do with God’s calling. As Paul concludes, “So then it is not of him who wills [i.e., election is not a result of men exercising their free will or choosing God], nor of him who runs [i.e. it has nothing to do with human exertion or works], but of God who shows mercy” (Rom. 9:16). As Augustine so beautifully states in his Confessions:
...Interestingly, one of Paul’s proofs that the gospel is the power of God is that “the world through wisdom did not know God” (1 Cor. 1:21).
The apostle Paul says that the biblical doctrine of salvation completely excludes human boasting (Rom. 3:27). Yet, if Arminianism is true and some people have the wisdom and moral perception to choose Christ while others do not, then do they not have a reason to boast? If some men on the basis of their own intrinsic power and faith have caused God to choose them over others (who were unwilling), then do they not have a reason to brag? Of course they do!
Therefore, Arminianism cannot be true for it repeatedly contradicts Paul’s teaching. But, if men are dead in trespasses and sins and totally unable by their own will or power to respond to Christ until He raises them from the dead through regeneration, then there is no reason to boast. The biblical gospel preserves the doctrines of grace of which divine election is so integral a part.
The Arminian interpretation of Romans 8:29 explicitly contradicts the doctrine of original sin or man’s state after the fall (e.g. total depravity and spiritual inability). If God’s choice is contingent on fallen man’s prior choice, then no one would be elect for Paul says, “There is none who understands…who seeks God…who does good, no not one” (Rom. 3:11, 12). The Bible teaches that unsaved, unregenerate men hate both Christ and the truth (Jn. 3:19-21). Unregenerate fallen man: dwells in darkness (Jn. 1:4-5); is dead spiritually (Eph. 2:1-5); has a heart of stone which is unable to respond to divine truth (Ezek. 11:19); is helpless (Ezek. 16:4-6); is unable to repent (Jer. 13:23); is enslaved to Satan (Ac. 26:17-18); and is unable to see or comprehend divine truth (1 Cor. 2:14).
Unconditional election is the logical corollary to total depravity. Thus Jesus Christ taught: “No one can come to Me unless the Father who sent Me draws him.... No one can come to Me unless it has been granted to him by My Father” (Jn.. 6:44, 65). An unregenerate man can no more choose Christ as Savior than can a rotting corpse raise itself.
Since the Bible teaches that the fall has rendered man incapable of believing in Christ and repenting, the idea that God looked through time and chose those who first chose him is absurd and impossible. That is why the Bible teaches that faith and repentance are gifts from God (cf. Jn. 3:3-8; 6:44-45, 65; Eph. 2:8; Phil. 1:29; 2 Pet. 1:2, 3). “For unless God by sovereign, operative grace had turned our enmity to love and our disbelief to faith we would never yield the response of faith and love.” Furthermore, the biblical passages which teach unconditional election are clear and abundant.
The Arminian doctrine of a conditional election is an implicit denial of the sovereignty of God. “Evangelicals” who emphatically reject the doctrine of unconditional election, foreknowledge (biblically defined) and predestination do so because they believe that God’s prior sovereign choice and predestination infringes on human freedom. Consequently the Arminian’s concept of free will or human freedom becomes the presuppositional axis of their whole theological system. It completely alters their concept of God and their doctrine of salvation.
For example, the Arminian is well aware that the Bible teaches that God is sovereign (read 1 Chron, 29:11-14; 2 Chron. 20:6; Job 12:10-23; 36:32; 42:2; Gen. 45:7; 50:20; Ex. 2:1-10; 4:11, 21; 7:3, 13; 8:15; 9:12, 35; Deut. 2:30; Prov. 21:1, 30; 19:21; 20:24; Isa. 40:15-23; 14:24, 27; 46:10, 11; 45:7; Am. 3:6; Dan. 4:31-32; Jn. 6:44, 45, 67; 17:2, 6, 9, 12; 12:37-40; 15:16; Ac. 2:23; 4:28; 13:48; 16:14; 18:27; Rom. 9; Eph. 1:1ff, Ja. 1:17-18; etc).
But in order to preserve his philosophical concept of human freedom he proposes the idea of a self-limiting God. In other words, God voluntarily limited His absolute sovereign power so that He would not intrude upon man’s free will. This humanistic presupposition is foundational to the idea that man allows God to elect him. (In other words, in the sphere of salvation man is sovereign over God). But this self-limiting concept raises a few pertinent questions. Is it possible for God to suppress, negate or alter one of His essential attributes? Can God somehow voluntarily cease to be absolutely sovereign over certain aspects of His creation? The biblical answer to this question is absolutely not. God, the Bible tells us, cannot deny Himself (2 Tim. 2:13). He can no more cease to be sovereign than could He lie, for to do so would be to deny Himself.
The idea that God can create an area of pure contingency outside of His control is just as unbiblical and absurd as teaching that God could create some part of creation that could exist without God’s sustaining power. It is simply impossible. In his zeal to protect his humanistic concept of human freedom, the Arminian must posit a God who can cease to be God.
Further, if man is to be truly free from all outside influences and forces as Arminian theology requires, then man would have to be a self-created, truly autonomous, self-sustaining being. But, that is obviously not the case. Robert L. Reymond writes:
Salvation is guaranteed by God’s electing love and predestinating power. Such a doctrine is totally incompatible with the idea that everything boils down to the “free” choice of people who are “dead in trespasses and sins” (Eph. 2:1), who could lose their faith and salvation at any moment. Since it is God alone who saves, Paul can affirm that nothing created can separate the elect from God’s love (v. 39). Nothing created—not even man’s will—has the power over the elect’s final salvation. “He has shown how the present pilgrimage of the people of God falls into its place in that determinate and undefeatable plan of God that is bounded by two foci, the sovereign love of God in his eternal counsel and glorification with Christ in the age to come" (John Murray, Romans, 321). Girardeau writes:
“Whatsoever, then, may be, according to the Arminian view, the love of God towards his saints, it is a love which does not secure their salvation: it is not a saving love. It is not equal to the love which a mother cherishes for her child. She would save him if she could. This reputed divine love may be called a special love, but it is not the love for his saints which the Scriptures assign to God. The idea of it was not born of inspiration: God never claimed such love as his own... What God is assuring his children in Romans 8:29 is not that He has foreseen our favourable response to his call when the time comes and has therefore decided that we shall duly be conformed to the image of his Son. It is rather that he loved us in anticipation and determined, for reasons entirely hidden from us, that we should be conformed to the image of his Son by an act of his sovereign grace.”
Therefore, Christians can be “confident of this very thing, that He who has begun a good work in you will complete it until the day of Jesus Christ” (Phil. 1:6).
The Arminian interpretation of Romans 8:29 contradicts the biblical teaching that salvation is by the pure grace of God. If (as modern evangelicals assert) God’s predestination of the elect is based on something that men do such as faith and repentance, then ultimately conversion is not entirely a work of God’s grace. Faith and repentance are no longer gifts of God’s grace but are autonomous, self-generated acts of the human will. Men are no longer saved by or through faith (Rom. 3:22, 25, 28, 30; 5:1; Eph. 2:8) but rather because of faith. According to the Arminian interpretation “it is not God and God alone who works salvation…the actual enjoyment of salvation hangs at a decisive point upon something in man, or something done by man.”
Martin Luther repudiates the idea that God cannot save man unless man allows Him to dispense His grace. In his exposition of 1 Peter 1:2 he writes:
V. 2a. According to the foreknowledge of God the Father. Peter says, they are elected. How? Not by themselves, but according to the order or purpose of God. For we will not be able to raise ourselves to heaven nor create faith in ourselves. God will not permit all persons to enter heaven; he will very definitely identify his own. Here the human doctrine of free will and or our own ability avails nothing any longer. It does not depend upon our will but upon the will and election of God.
This means that you are chosen, you have not obtained it through your own strength, work or merit, for the treasure is too great, and all the holiness and righteousness of mankind far too worthless to obtain it; moreover you were heathen, knew nothing of God, had no hope and served dumb idols. Therefore, without any assistance on your part, out of pure grace you have come to such inexpressible glory, namely, only in the way that God the Father appointed you to it from eternity. Thus he presents the foreknowledge of God in a very beautiful and comfortable light, as it he should have said: You are chosen and you will indeed remain so, for God who foreknew you is sufficiently strong and certain that his foreknowledge cannot fail him, nevertheless so far as you believe his promise and esteem him as the true God.
From this we can in brief draw the teaching that this foreknowledge does not rest upon our worthiness and merit, as the sophists hold, for then Satan could every moment make it doubtful and overthrow it; but it rests in the hand of God, and is founded upon his mercy, which is unchangeable and eternal; consequently it is called the foreknowledge of God, and therefore it is certain and cannot fail. [Martin Luther, Commentary on the Epistles of Peter and Jude (Grand Rapids: Kregel, 1982), 10-11.]
Further, Romans 9:11-18 makes it abundantly clear that election has nothing to do with what we do and everything to do with God’s calling. As Paul concludes, “So then it is not of him who wills [i.e., election is not a result of men exercising their free will or choosing God], nor of him who runs [i.e. it has nothing to do with human exertion or works], but of God who shows mercy” (Rom. 9:16). As Augustine so beautifully states in his Confessions:
“By your gift I had come totally not to will what I had willed but to will what you willed” Saint Augustine of Hippo
...Interestingly, one of Paul’s proofs that the gospel is the power of God is that “the world through wisdom did not know God” (1 Cor. 1:21).
- “[T]he weakness of God is stronger than men. For you see your calling, brethren, that not many wise according to the flesh, not many mighty, not many noble, are called….God has chosen, the things which are not, to bring to nothing the things that are, that no flesh should glory in His presence….as it is written, ‘He who glories, let him glory in the LORD’” (1 Cor. 1:25, 28, 29, 31).
Granted that your friends assign to “free will as little as possible”, nonetheless they teach us that by that little we can attain righteousness and grace; and they solve the problem as to why God justifies one and abandons another simply by presupposing “free-will”, and saying: “the one endeavoured and the other did not; and God regards the one for his endeavour and despises the other; and He would be unjust were He to do anything else!...They [the guardians of “free will”] do not believe that He intercedes before God and obtains grace for them by His blood, and “grace” (as is here said) “for grace”. And as they believe, so it is unto them. Christ is in truth an inexorable judge to them, and deservedly so; for they abandon Him in His office as a Mediator and kindest Saviour, and account His blood and grace as of less worth than the efforts and endeavors of “free-will”! [Martin Luther, The Bondage of the Will, Translated by J. I. Packer and O. R. Johnson (Cambridge: Jones Clark, 1957), 292, 305.]
The apostle Paul says that the biblical doctrine of salvation completely excludes human boasting (Rom. 3:27). Yet, if Arminianism is true and some people have the wisdom and moral perception to choose Christ while others do not, then do they not have a reason to boast? If some men on the basis of their own intrinsic power and faith have caused God to choose them over others (who were unwilling), then do they not have a reason to brag? Of course they do!
Therefore, Arminianism cannot be true for it repeatedly contradicts Paul’s teaching. But, if men are dead in trespasses and sins and totally unable by their own will or power to respond to Christ until He raises them from the dead through regeneration, then there is no reason to boast. The biblical gospel preserves the doctrines of grace of which divine election is so integral a part.
The Arminian interpretation of Romans 8:29 explicitly contradicts the doctrine of original sin or man’s state after the fall (e.g. total depravity and spiritual inability). If God’s choice is contingent on fallen man’s prior choice, then no one would be elect for Paul says, “There is none who understands…who seeks God…who does good, no not one” (Rom. 3:11, 12). The Bible teaches that unsaved, unregenerate men hate both Christ and the truth (Jn. 3:19-21). Unregenerate fallen man: dwells in darkness (Jn. 1:4-5); is dead spiritually (Eph. 2:1-5); has a heart of stone which is unable to respond to divine truth (Ezek. 11:19); is helpless (Ezek. 16:4-6); is unable to repent (Jer. 13:23); is enslaved to Satan (Ac. 26:17-18); and is unable to see or comprehend divine truth (1 Cor. 2:14).
Unconditional election is the logical corollary to total depravity. Thus Jesus Christ taught: “No one can come to Me unless the Father who sent Me draws him.... No one can come to Me unless it has been granted to him by My Father” (Jn.. 6:44, 65). An unregenerate man can no more choose Christ as Savior than can a rotting corpse raise itself.
Since the Bible teaches that the fall has rendered man incapable of believing in Christ and repenting, the idea that God looked through time and chose those who first chose him is absurd and impossible. That is why the Bible teaches that faith and repentance are gifts from God (cf. Jn. 3:3-8; 6:44-45, 65; Eph. 2:8; Phil. 1:29; 2 Pet. 1:2, 3). “For unless God by sovereign, operative grace had turned our enmity to love and our disbelief to faith we would never yield the response of faith and love.” Furthermore, the biblical passages which teach unconditional election are clear and abundant.
The Arminian doctrine of a conditional election is an implicit denial of the sovereignty of God. “Evangelicals” who emphatically reject the doctrine of unconditional election, foreknowledge (biblically defined) and predestination do so because they believe that God’s prior sovereign choice and predestination infringes on human freedom. Consequently the Arminian’s concept of free will or human freedom becomes the presuppositional axis of their whole theological system. It completely alters their concept of God and their doctrine of salvation.
For example, the Arminian is well aware that the Bible teaches that God is sovereign (read 1 Chron, 29:11-14; 2 Chron. 20:6; Job 12:10-23; 36:32; 42:2; Gen. 45:7; 50:20; Ex. 2:1-10; 4:11, 21; 7:3, 13; 8:15; 9:12, 35; Deut. 2:30; Prov. 21:1, 30; 19:21; 20:24; Isa. 40:15-23; 14:24, 27; 46:10, 11; 45:7; Am. 3:6; Dan. 4:31-32; Jn. 6:44, 45, 67; 17:2, 6, 9, 12; 12:37-40; 15:16; Ac. 2:23; 4:28; 13:48; 16:14; 18:27; Rom. 9; Eph. 1:1ff, Ja. 1:17-18; etc).
But in order to preserve his philosophical concept of human freedom he proposes the idea of a self-limiting God. In other words, God voluntarily limited His absolute sovereign power so that He would not intrude upon man’s free will. This humanistic presupposition is foundational to the idea that man allows God to elect him. (In other words, in the sphere of salvation man is sovereign over God). But this self-limiting concept raises a few pertinent questions. Is it possible for God to suppress, negate or alter one of His essential attributes? Can God somehow voluntarily cease to be absolutely sovereign over certain aspects of His creation? The biblical answer to this question is absolutely not. God, the Bible tells us, cannot deny Himself (2 Tim. 2:13). He can no more cease to be sovereign than could He lie, for to do so would be to deny Himself.
The idea that God can create an area of pure contingency outside of His control is just as unbiblical and absurd as teaching that God could create some part of creation that could exist without God’s sustaining power. It is simply impossible. In his zeal to protect his humanistic concept of human freedom, the Arminian must posit a God who can cease to be God.
Further, if man is to be truly free from all outside influences and forces as Arminian theology requires, then man would have to be a self-created, truly autonomous, self-sustaining being. But, that is obviously not the case. Robert L. Reymond writes:
There simply is no such thing as a will which is detached from and totally independent of the person making the choice—suspended, so to speak, in midair and enjoying some “extra-personal vantage point” from which to determine itself. The will is the “mind choosing” (Edwards). Men choose the things they do because of the complex, finite persons that they are. They cannot will to walk on water or to flap their arms and fly. Their choices in such matters are restricted by their physical capabilities. Similarly, their moral choices are also determined by the total complexion of who they are. And the Bible informs us that men are not only finite but are now also sinners, who by nature cannot bring forth good fruit (Matt. 7:18), by nature cannot hear Christ’s word that they might have life (John 8:43), by nature cannot be subject to the law of God (Rom. 8:7), by nature cannot discern truths of the Spirit of God (1 Cor. 2:14), by nature cannot confess from the heart Jesus as Lord (1 Cor. 12:3), by nature cannot control the tongue (James 3:8), and by nature cannot come to Christ (John 6:44, 65). In order to do any of these things, they must receive powerful aid coming to them ab extra. So there simply is no such thing as a free will which can always choose the right. [Robert Reymond, 353-354.]
__________
