In the Arminian system, the God who antecedently wills the salvation of all knowingly provides a pattern of salvation that is suitable only to the salvation of some. This doctrinal juxtaposition of an antecedent, and never effectuated, divine will to save all and a consequent, effectuated, divine will to save some on the foreknown condition of their acceptance of faith, reflects the problem of scientia media. The foreknowledge of God, in the Arminian view, consists in part in a knowledge of contingent events that lie outside of God’s willing and, in the case of the divine foreknowledge, of the rejection of grace by some, of contingent events that not only thwart the antecedent divine will to save all, but also are capable of thwarting it because of the divinely foreknown resistibility of the gift of grace. In other words, the Arminian God is locked into the inconsistency of genuinely willing to save all people while at the same time binding himself to a plan of salvation that he foreknows with certainty cannot effectuate his will. This divine inability results from the necessity of those events that lie within the divine foreknowledge but outside of the divine willing remaining outside of the effective will of God. Arminian theology posits the ultimate contradiction that God’s antecedent will genuinely wills what he foreknows cannot come to pass and that his consequent will effects something other than his ultimate intention. The Arminian God, in short, is either ineffectual or self-contradictory. Reformed doctrine on the other hand, respects the ultimate mystery of the infinite will of God, affirms the sovereignty and efficacy of God, and teaches the soteriological consistency of the divine intention and will with its effects.
Richard A Muller
Philosophical and Theological Problems with Arminianism in all its various forms.
2. Foreknowledge being impossible, God’s knowledge is contingent on future potentials. God must learn from actions of men that occur outside of His mind and independent of His will. God cannot know all things, His knowledge being dependent on the arbitrary and indeterminate choices of the libertarian will of man. Thus god is not omniscient.
3. God then is not sovereign in all spheres and therefore not sovereign at all as sovereignty is understood in the classical Christian sense. God is limited and no longer all powerful. This is not the Christian God who declares the end from the beginning or who works all things after the counsel of His will. This is a god who learns and reacts to events that occur in a creation that has an existence independent of Himself. This God is not omnipotent.
4. Since there are conditions that occur outside of Himself, conditions which of necessity cannot be known in advance, events which He must learn as they occur, God must react and change to adapt to these circumstances. This God is not immutable.
5. In order to keep creation moving towards his desired end, he must of necessity intercede at times and violate the indeterminate will of man. But this is the very will that is said to be inviolable in the soteriological act. This god is compromised and inconsistent. This god is arbitrary and capricious. This god is confused and contradictory.
6. This god, it is said, has died for all men for all time, knowing full well that His plan of salvation will not save all men. So while some men decry the determinate God of Calvinism, they are more than willing to accept a god who knows the future infallibly, knows his plan will be ineffective for the majority of mankind and institutes this plan anyway knowing full well that it’s result will be the death of most who have ever lived.
7. Free will adherents reject a God who determines all things. But they are willing to accept a god who knows all things and chooses to do nothing about them. This is, so they say, because the will of man is free. God knows full well that terrorists will fly a jet into the WTC and chooses to do nothing. He is capable of doing something but values the libertarian will of men above the eternal destiny of all those in the buildings and so chooses, by his refusal to intercede, to consign most of those inhabitants to eternal death. If I observe a crime and have the ability to do something to prevent it or know in advance of it’s occurrence and fail to notify the proper authorities I am as guilty as those that perpetrated the crime. This god is guilty of complicity. He is an accessory before the fact.
8. In the case of open theism, god didn’t know what he was doing or what He would get by doing it (sin, evil, murders, war, untold human suffering on a massive scale) yet was willing to take that chance. This is the god who risks, but exactly who and what were affected by this risk? To add to the conundrum god could not know if there was anything he would be able to do to correct the mess he created. And the open theist suggests that the god of Calvinism is cold hearted and despotic?
9. This god potentially died for no one. The atonement is universal in scope. God has not done anything more for one person than He has done for any other person and the one thing he has not done for those who are lost is to save them. Salvation is for everyone in general, but for no one in particular. This god is dependent and ineffective.
10. Libertarians tacitly reject total depravity. Man is not dead in sin but merely sick. He is inclined to do evil but is not in fact evil. Salvation is a potential that must be appropriated by the individual. Man cannot be wholly dead in sin and make this choice. The potential for good must be present. Man must overcome the inclination to reject God in order to accept the offer of the Gospel. Unfortunately, the Gospel itself, while evidently powerful enough to save those who choose to accept it, is impotent to convert the hearts of most of mankind. Free will theology suffers from its own type of particularism, but it’s an arbitrary particularism dependent on the condition of the individual. Salvation is “available” only for the ethically advantaged.
11. No wonder then that the evangel is often reduced to begging and pleading. God is not going to do anything but offer a potential. MAN is the decisive factor. Man is the determinative agent. We must convince man to make a positive decision for Christ. Better salespersons are more effective evangelists. Solus Christos is lost as salvation is synergistic. Arminianism stands on the same epistemological ground as atheism.”
Mark Chambers
