Category: Soteriology

McAtee Contra Clay Libolt on Penal Substitutionary Atonement — II

Over here;

HARSH JUSTICE 2: THE MEANING OF OLD TESTAMENT SACRIFICE

We see Dr. Clay Libolt continue to attack Penal Substitutionary Atonement, doing so by appealing to academic sources that embrace anti-Supernatural presuppositions and by appealing to subjective and emotive feelings.

At the outset I will congratulate Clay for understanding that he can not get to the kind of (im)morality he desires unless he is able to change out the Doctrine of God. Clay understands, at some level, that the reason his Christian Reformed Denomination took the wrong turn (in his opinion) on the sexuality issue (perverts cannot be members) is because their doctrine of God is, in Clay’s opinion, all bollixed up. As such, Clay is attacking the foundational problem (the Doctrine of God) that downstream resulted in the CRC forbidding sexual license and perversion from being accepted as the norm in the denomination.

We know this is true because of what Clay writes here;

If you believe the Bible, you believe PSA (Penal Substitutionary Atonement). In 2022 the synod of the Christian Reformed Church—the synod that began the Abide takeover of the CRC—said just that. Before turning disastrously to sexuality, they took up PSA. The sequence was not accidental. The harsh justice that the synod has since meted out to those who differ with majority on sexuality is rooted in the theology that lies behind PSA. While the synod acknowledged that there were other ways to view atonement, they claimed that “The Scriptures and confessional standards make clear the substitutionary nature of Jesus Christ’s work,” and they added, “To deny penal substitutionary atonement is to take away from the glory of our Savior” (Acts of Synod 2022:897).

Note here the connection Clay is making. In Clay’s mind because the PSA gives us a harsh God who metes out harsh justice (the title of Clay’s series is “Harsh Justice”) the syondical action on the issue of pervert sexuality is seen as “harsh justice,” coming from the hands of harsh people who serve a harsh God. Clay understands that in order to get sexual perverts to be accepted in the CRC (or in Christendom in general) one must first attack the doctrine of God that lays behind the Penal Substitutionary Atonement. Clay Libolt will go so far to mainstream sexual perversion in the Church that he is willing to attack and change the doctrine of God in order to accomplish his ends. The implication of all this is that if you don’t believe in Clay’s “Kinder and Gentler” god you yourself become a harsh person because you have a harsh God.

Another reality that we have to point out is Clay’s belief that Penal Substitutionary Atonement makes God a harsh God and is an example of harsh justice. We need to ask Clay, “by what standard is this just God’s justice harsh?” Keep in mind the “harsh justice” that Clay is repudiating here is a justice that finds the 2nd person of the Trinity, out of compassion for the triune God’s glory, eternally and lovingly agreeing to come and pay the penalty for His people’s sin and rebellion against Himself. God in Christ willing took upon Himself and bore the just penalty required by sin so that man the sinner might know favor with God?

This reminds me of something Arnulf of Leuven wrote in the 13th century;

What Thou, my Lord, hast suffered, was all for sinners’ gain;
Mine, mine was the transgression, but Thine the deadly pain.
Lo, here I fall, my Savior! ’Tis I deserve Thy place;
Look on me with Thy favor, vouchsafe to me Thy grace.

The question that begs being asked of Clay at this point is; “Sir, how is the Penal Substitutionary Atonement harsh in any sense?” Indeed, one might observe that it is harsh for any mortal to refer to God’s condescension as “harsh.” If Clay would give us a frank answer as to where he finds the harshness in the PSA I believe that would be most revealing.

In the course of his attack on PSA Clay refers to it as appear(ing) strange and dubious—fairytale-like.  This statement reveals the power of Worldviews. I have no doubt that to Clay, given his neo-orthodox Barthian worldview that the PSA does indeed seem fairy-tale like. However, to those who are not Barthians and who do not share Clay’s worldview the PSA would never seem fairytale like, unless of course, one believes that fairy-tales are based on realities. (Something I definitely believe.) By calling the PSA “fairy-tale like” Clay desire to diminish the truthfulness and reality of the PSA by placing it in the same genre as Cinderella or Snow-White. Clay is suggesting that it is childlike. However, even here we see how much Clay is disconnected from reality because fairy-tales, unlike his spin, are not for children. The best of fairy-tales have deep wells of truth in them.

Once upon a time there were a couple with a great Liege-Lord who had provided for them in every way possible. He had given them companionship. He had provided for them a expansive and generous lifestyle. He had made them the stewards of His vast realm. One thing only had He forbidden from them and yet it was that one forbidding that they pursued in defiance of this generous Liege-Lord. He had told the couple that should they pursue His forbidding they would on that day surely die. However, when that day came when His forbidding was defied for the embrace of the false promise that they could be equal with the great King, the great King would not fulfill his oath of death upon his creation but instead visited them with lesser consequences against their disobedience that included that all their descendants save one would bear the wound that resulted from their disobedience. However, the great King knew that He could not allow His original promise of death communicated to those who bore His image to become null since the voiding of that original promise of death would mean that His Word and His justice un-fulfilled would be seen as a blemish upon Himself and His person. So, in order to demonstrate His righteousness in the face of the defiance that was previously committed the Great King resolved to pay the originally required penalty against rebellion by writing Himself into His story so as to Himself take upon His own penalty originally promised as against defiance and rebellion as pursued by His garden kept couple. In just such a manner He would remain just and at the same time the justifier of those who would have faith in His penalty fulfillment.

So, if by fairy-tale Clay means “childish and not true” we obviously object. However, if by fairy-tale we mean the repository of deep truths then who could disagree?

Along the way in Clay’s article against PSA Clay writes;

At the heart of it (PSA) is an idea about justice. In PSA, justice is a law of the universe, and not just the universe we can observe and study, but everything that exists, including, notably, God. God cannot escape God’s own justice. Thus, God cannot just forgive Adam and Eve for what appears to be a minor infraction, eating from a tree that they were forbidden to eat from, the sort of infraction every parent must forgive a thousand times before their child reaches puberty. And God must punish not only Adam and Eve but their children all the way down to us. This ghastly justice must be served, and thus Jesus must suffer and die, and those who fail to believe in Jesus for whatever reason (like, for example, never having heard of it) must suffer eternally in hell.

A few observations here;

1.) If Justice is not a law of the universe that must be fulfilled then it seems that all that is left is that “injustice” is the law of the universe.

2.) What kind of justice would it be if God could escape God’s own justice?

3.) Clay clearly has God in the dock with Clay in the Judge’s seat as Clay (in one of the funny little British whigs) tells God that Adam and Eve’s defiance was, after all, only a minor infraction.  We also see “his honor” Clay judge God for His “ghastly justice.” I think Clay lives by this bit of doggerel;

Clay speaks of a cruel and unfair God
As if Clay were the true Transcendent;
As if Clay were judge of all the earth,
And God the poor defendant.
As if God were arraigned with a very black case,
And on the skill of His lawyer dependent,
And “I wouldn’t like to be God,” Clay says,
“For His record is not resplendent.”

4.) Notice the implication that in Clay’s world disobedient children are not visited with consequences even though the parents still forgive them. Someone should tell Rev. Libolt that forgiveness and consequences  are not mutually exclusive.

5.) Clay, in complaining about God’s “lack of fairness” against everybody but especially as against God that people who have never heard the Good News must still be punished presupposes that God owes anybody anything. When God gives to people what they deserve that is hardly “unfair.” Someone tell Clay that what is surprising is not that those who have never heard the Gospel should justly received the penalty they earnestly desire — tell Clay that what is surprising is that not everybody receives the just penalty they deserve. All because God rescues some who were infinitely undeserving doesn’t mean that when He doesn’t rescue somebody else who is also infinitely undeserving that therefore He is harsh and metes out “ghastly justice.” The surprise in the Gospel and the PSA is not that some are rescued and others are not. The surprise in the Gospel and the PSA is that anybody is rescued.

To underscore his complaint against God, Clay appeals to Douglas A. Campbell who wrote the forward in the book that Clay is intimate with;

It follows [from PSA] that the heart of the gospel is a political and retributive God and arrangement—and hence that all politics should be fundamentally retributive as well. God, we might say, is a God who is wholly committed to law and order, to the appropriate coercive order, and ultimately to the correctness of the death penalty, and this says the most important thing about who he is. Righteous violence defines him, as that is deployed in support of laws. This model of the gospel then, underwrites political authoritarianism and God is essentially a dictator. He is a fair dictator, but a dictator nonetheless, who wields the sword appropriately. (19)


1.) Note the language used here to poison the well. “Retributive,” “Violent,” “Dictator,” “Coercive,” “Death penalty,” “Authoritarianism.” This is all spin, spun in order to make God look ogre like. This is written by a man who clearly hates the God of the Bible, and Clay quoting him approvingly reveals (again) that Clay likewise hates the God of the Bible.

2.) Note that the word “violence” has been inserted as a replacement for the proper word “justice.” If Clay and company can make God’s justice look “violent” then it advances their spin. “Violent” by its very definition conveys the idea of harshness. Something that Clay is laboring hard to sustain.

3.) Here the complaint is against the definition of God as being “righteous justice.” Before we condemn that though let us consider the other options;

a.) Unrighteous justice
b.) Righteous non-justice
c.) Unrighteous non-justice

I presume that nobody would advocate for (a.) above. Neither would anyone desire a God who by His non-justice would be seen as unrighteous (c.). As for (b.) I am not even sure what “righteous non-justice” would look like. So, yes, God is defined as “righteous justice” but only as that righteous-justice serves His glory and our good.

4.) If God is indeed a fair Dictator who could possibly complain except for the criminal class?

Having examined just this much it is clear that those who want to follow Clay in this cannot at one and the same time be considered Christians with those who take the strongest exceptions to this dismantling of Penal Substitutionary Atonement.

The Nature of the Atonement … McAtee Contra Libolt (I)

Here I pick up critiquing CRC minister Dr. Clay Libolt’s thoughts on the weakness of the Biblical doctrine of Penal Substitutionary Atonement (PSA). Clay has appealed to a recent book by Andrew Remington Rillera who was trained at that paragon Institution of Orthodox Christianity — Duke Divinity School. Rillera has produced a book that insists that the atonement was not about the effect of the atonement upon God (objective view) but instead the effect of the atonement was upon the believer (subjective view).  Rillera’s book insists that the sacrificial imagery in the NT is aimed at grounding the exhortation for the audience to be conformed to the cruciform image of Jesus by sharing in his death. The consistent message throughout the entire NT is not that Jesus died instead of us, rather, Jesus dies ahead of us so that we can unite with him and be conformed to the image of his death.

Again, the impact of the cross work of Christ is on man and so the atonement is measured by the effect it has on man. This is in contrast to the teaching of the PSA which does not deny the effect the cross work of Christ has on man, but insist that the subjective impact can only make sense in light of the reconciling impact of the atonement on God toward man. In other words there is a manward impact upon the recipient but that manward impact only makes a difference because God set forth Christ to be a propitiation through faith in his blood, to declare his righteousness for the remission of sins that are past, through the forbearance of God. In the atonement God was in Christ reconciling the world to himself, no longer counting people’s sins against them.

When we understand that differing theories of the atonement historically have fallen under three overarching categories;

1.) Theories which explain the atonement by the moral influence it has on those who will be recipients (Moral influence theories).

2.) Theories which explain the atonement as God’s eternally assigned means by which He would be reconciled to eternally loved but fallen sinners (Propitiation theories).

3.) Theories which proclaim the atonement as a cosmic victory (Christus Victor theories).

Some prefer a twofold classification of atonement theories, limiting the options to subjective theories as those which emphasize the effect on the believer, in distinction from objective theories which put the stress on what the atonement achieves quite outside the individual. Andrew Remington Rillera has given us a scholarly, erudite, but errant book that opts for option #1 with little to no consideration of the effect of the atonement Godward. This is “Christian” humanism and given Dr. Clay Libolt’s track record through the years of his ministry it is not surprising that Clay would be so enchanted by this volume from the Duke scholar and that despite the fact that such teaching goes against the Three Forms of Unity that Clay has sworn to uphold.

From here I will quote Dr. Libolt’s article that can be found here;

Harsh Justice, Introduction

Clay Libolt writes (Hereafter CL);

This theory of atonement is also “substitutionary.” Because we cannot pay the penalty, God sends God’s own son to pay it for us. Jesus steps in where we cannot. He pays the penalty on the cross.

I note here without developing the thought that this second claim of PSA (Penal Substitutionary Atonement) is a bit odd for at least two reasons. One is that the idea that someone can step in for the guilt of someone else seems strange. It’s true that occasionally a person will give up their life for someone else. I think about those who stepped in front of Nazi firing squads, allowing others to escape death. To do so was heroic. But what of the commander of the firing squad? To allow an innocent person to be executed or, rather, to require that someone die in those circumstances is on any account wrong. And in the PSA analogy, we would seem to be putting God in the place of the commander of the firing squad: someone must die; it doesn’t matter whom.

BLMc responds;

1.) I can’t explain why Clay would find this at all odd since Scripture explicitly tells us;

Rmns. 5:7 For one will hardly die for a righteous person; though perhaps for the good person someone would even dare to die. 8 But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.

I Peter 3:18 For Christ also hath once suffered for sins, the just for the unjust, that He might bring us to God, being put to death in the flesh, but quickened by the Spirit,

2.) We would note that the Scripture does not teach that the Father “allowed” Jesus Christ to be a propitiatory sacrifice but rather Scripture teaches that God put forth Christ

In this is love, not that we have loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins. — I John 4:10

3.) Clay writes that such an arrangement as the PSA would be “wrong.” We would ask, “wrong by what standard?” Clearly the death of the just for the unjust is extolled as pre-eminently right by God’s standard.

Him (Jesus Christ), being delivered by the determinate counsel and foreknowledge of God, ye have taken, and by wicked hands have crucified and slain:  Acts 2:23

Is Clay saying that God did wrong by sending forth Christ to serve as our substitutionary death.

We begin to see here that Clay is not only disagreeing with the nature of the atonement but we are seeing that Clay has embraced a very different God then the God we find in the Scriptures. This is not just merely a matter of disagreeing about the mechanics of the Cross (as magnificently important as that is). This is about the person, character and attributes of God. In the end this is competition between different understandings of Christianity. Clay wants to start with man. Christians want to start with God.

4.) Note that Clay has God being equal to a Nazi commander executing a poor innocent unjustly. Talk about loading the narrative in your favor. Does Clay really believe that orthodox Protestant Christian theology insists that God doesn’t really care who is the substitute for sinners?

According to the Heidelberg Catechism he swore to uphold the substitute for sinners can’t just any poor schlub;

Question 15: What sort of a mediator and deliverer then must we seek for?

Answer: For one who is very man,7 and perfectly righteous; and yet more powerful than all creatures; that is, one who is also very God.

Secondly on this note, when Clay writes against Penal Substitutionary Atonement he is directly contravening the Heidelberg which explicitly teaches Penal Substitutionary Atonement.

Question 12: Since then, by the righteous judgment of God, we deserve temporal and eternal punishment, is there no way by which we may escape that punishment, and be again received into favor?

Answer: God will have His justice satisfied (Penal), and therefore we must make this full satisfaction, either by ourselves or by another (Substitution).

Also here, Christ was not “some poor victim” of a Nazi Firing Squad Commander (God) who God just randomly chose to be our substitute as Clay would have it;

John 6:38 For I have come down from heaven, not to do My own will, but to do the will of Him who sent Me.

Ps. 40 “Here I am, I have come—it is written about me in the scroll: / I delight to do Your will, O my God; Your law is within my heart.” (Cmp. Heb. 10)

Jesus was sent by the Father and eternally willingly embraced what the Father eternally tasked Him with. The Son was not a victim of the Father but the Father and the Son with the Spirit entered from eternity into a covenant whereby God would be glorified in the cosmic impact of the Atonement.

Finally, while Christ was innocent in His person, as our sins were imputed to Him while on the Cross, as a public person He was our sin-bearer.

CL writes,

Second, there is a matter of proportionality. This goes in two directions. First, for God to require eternal punishment for temporal sins seems entirely out of proportion. Is it just for God to require hell for the sins of a child who dies young? Or a person who lives an exemplary life apart from the faith? But it is also out of proportion in the other direction. For the sufferings of Christ, terrible as they were, to balance the suffering of the world seems, well, not entirely adequate. Perhaps this is the reason that Christians seem intent on Good Friday of focusing on how much Jesus suffered.

BLMc responds;

This paragraph leaves me nearly speechless. The fact that a minister believes this and writes this is just astonishing. Understand that Clay is arguing here that God is not just. Clay believes that God is being unfair and overbearing by making the punishment fit the crime. Note, what Clay is doing here is that Clay is summoning God to the dock and serving as the jury Foreman Clay is demanding God give an account of Himself to Clay. It is stunning. Clay, according to Clay’s own standards, has determined that God is disproportional when it comes to punishment for sin.

As to Clay’s question;

1.) Yes, it is just for God to require hell for the sins of a child who dies young. Indeed, what is incredible is that any of us, regardless of our age and comparative innocence should be given grace. Clay is surprised by God’s justice. I am surprised by God’s grace. None of us deserve anything but Hell given both our sin nature and our sinful acts. When it comes to these matters we say along with Father Abraham, “Will not the judge of all the earth do right.” Who is Clay Libolt to call God before the bar of His adjudication?

2.) Yes, it is just of God to cast someone into hell who lived an “exemplary life” without faith. We find ourselves asking first, “exemplary by what standard?” Clay is clearly grading on a curve while God grades on a straight scale. All have sinned and fallen short of what God justly requires (living to and for His glory).  Also consider, is it really possible for anyone, saved or unsaved, to live an “exemplary life” when the standard is God’s perfection? Are we really to believe that a person who has lived their whole lives with themselves as God is a person who has lived an exemplary life? Can a person who has lived all his life for his own glory be said to have lived an exemplary life?

Can you believe a Christian minister is reasoning this way?

3.) But Clay doesn’t stop there. The man actually suggests that the sufferings of Christ on the Cross do not meet and so satisfy the way the world has suffered in/during world history. In other words, for Clay, the world has suffered more than Christ could have ever suffered during His life and on the Cross. Christ’s sufferings were not enough to pay (“not entirely adequate”) for all the suffering that sin has brought in the world. Honestly, even in my most generous moments I can’t see this as anything but blasphemous.

So, for Clay, Penal Substitutionary Atonement can’t be true because Christ didn’t suffer enough in order for it to be true.

We could go on a rag here but suffice it to say that Clay does not appreciate the suffering of the sinless perfect Man and Holy God and the suffering of sinners but clearly at Clay’s age it is unlike any reasoning is going to pull him up short.

Clay is Reformed. Bret is Reformed. Both Clay and Bret served in the same denomination. Clay and Bret can’t both be Christian.

McAtee Contra Dr. Clay Libolt On The Penal Substitutionary Doctrine Of The Atonement

On his Blog former CRC Pastor Dr. Rev. Clay Libolt begins to explore the idea that all those who hold to the Penal Substitutionary teaching of the Atonement as recorded in Scripture are advancing the idea that God is mean.

I sometimes browse Dr. Libolt’s blog (“The Peripatetic Pastor”) because;

1.) Libolt was my assigned “mentor” when I began to date the CRC. New chaps dating the CRC, according to their book of Church Order have to be assigned mentors, presumably to help the newbee wade into the denomination. This “relationship” between Clay and I was a comedy of theological/ideological explosion. It was the classic example of when an immovable force meets an unstoppable object. Clay was and remains so far left that it is difficult for me to imagine how anyone could get more left. He was in his time the Robespierre of the CRC. Of course I was and am a touch to the right. In our few meetings we would invariably, within seconds, be debating as if the world’s future depended upon convincing one another of their error. To this day, the fact that I was assigned Clay Libolt as a mentor is proof to me that the thrice Holy God has a sense of humor.

2.) I also browse Clay’s blog because it is a handy dandy way to keep up to date on the latest boneheaded theory being advanced by the “Christian” left. Clay reads a good deal of the garbage put out by the “intellectual” left and so it is a way to keep up with the latest WOKE theology. One way to keep one’s mind sharp is by knowing the enemy’s strategy and thinking.

Not that Clay or anyone else cares but I seriously doubt that Clay is a Christian in any historic or Biblical sense of the word, and yet he Pastored one of the CRC flagship churches for decades and by his own accounting had a considerable influence in the denomination, being a voice for the “progressives” as they largely solidified their hold over the denomination during the time he “served.”

Libolt, as noted above, believes that the idea that Jesus Christ, serving as the penalty bearing substitute for the elect makes God mean. Clay writes,

“‘Is God Mean?’ And, in line with the direction of my Bad Theology series, to ask whether a mean God leads to mean politics. (The answer is yes.)”

As you can see in one fell swoop, Libolt has indicted historical biblical theology and contemporary politics as being mean.

Of course a question arises that Libolt does not answer and that question is “Mean to whom?” Certainly, it could not be argued that God is mean to the elect for whom Christ was their substitute, nor I shouldn’t think it could be argued that God was mean to the reprobate who only received what they earnestly desired. I mean is it “mean” to give to people what they want and/or what they deserve?

I would say that in the Penal Substitutionary atonement the only person that God could possibly be seen as being mean to is Himself. Now, I don’t believe that but if we use Libolt’s logic then as it was God Himself in the God-Man Jesus Christ who took on His own punishment for sin then there is no meanness to anyone else since there can be no being mean to those who were substituted for nor for those who weren’t substituted for since they didn’t want to be substituted for and since they received what they deserved.

In the OT we see that what Libolt is advocating just isn’t true. In Genesis 15, God enters into covenant with Abraham and whereas traditionally both parties to a covenant would walk between the slain bodies of the covenantal sacrifices in order to communicate that if the covenant agreement should be violated what had been done to the covenantal sacrifices would be done to the party that broke covenant. However, at this crucial part of the covenant ceremony the God of the Bible who is never described as “mean” chooses to put Abraham to sleep and takes on the full weight of the covenant punishments on himself walking alone between the bodies of the slain animals.  This is a “non-mean” covenant of grace.

Then, 2000 years later, in light of the fact that Abraham and his descendents repeatedly violated covenant, God, in the incarnate Jesus Christ, does take upon Himself the covenant curses for Abraham and the true sons of Abraham. And Libolt wants to call that mean?

To the contrary, of course, it is Libolt’s theology that creates for a mean God. Libolt would have us believe a God who does not punish sin thus showing a meanness to those who have had sin visited upon them by those who are mean. Libolt’s “non-mean” God means the judicially innocent never are avenged. The countless millions abused, tortured, and slain by the Soviet and Chinese communist gulag system are told “sucks to be you.” Libolt’s “non-mean” God means is unrighteous. A sovereign God who is also not righteous is a mean God. Libolt serves a mean God and because of that Libolt advances mean politics.

Honestly, this kind of talk (writing) by Libolt has to be considered blasphemous. I continue to pray that Libolt and his leftist legions repent and so discover for the first time the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord. I also pray that God would remove this kind of theology and its adherents.

Romans 6:23 & Grace Alone … Reformed Christianity; No Hope Without It

“For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.”

Romans 6:23

This one verse alone proves that Roman Catholicism, Federal Vision, Lutheranism and Arminianism are all contrary to Scripture with their implicit or explicit denial that eternal life is purely a grace gift that comes through Jesus Christ.

Note the contrast. Wages are something one earns and what one earns from sin is (eternal) death. This is put in contrast to what is not earned but instead is characterized as pure gift and that as in Christ Jesus our Lord.

This one verse sustains the truth that we are saved by grace alone through faith alone in Christ alone and it insists that even our faith is a gift of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.

So away with all models of salvation that by hook or by crook want to include works in our justification. Even our obedience in sanctification which is a necessary consequence of of justification are gifts that stem from having eternal life.

Salvation is not like Damnation. Damnation is 100% earned and is given as a just wage. Salvation is a free gift that is found in Jesus Christ our Lord ALONE.

Reformed Christianity … No Hope Without It.

Note — Lutheranism is included here because

1.) Lutheranism denies the perseverance of the Saints, teaching that one can lose their salvation, and when that is taught Christianity becomes a works religion.

2.) Lutheranism affirms that people can say “no” to irresistible grace and if people can say “no” to irresistible grace then the difference between those who say “no” and those who say “yes,” is the difference that constitutes a works.

3.) Lutheranism (like Arminianism) teaches that Christ died for all men. If Christ died for all men and all men are not saved then that which differentiates those who are saved that Christ died for and those who are not saved that Christ died for is a good work done by those who are Christ died that activates the death of Christ for them vis-a-vis those who don’t do that good work for whom Christ has also died.

I Get By With A Little Help From My Friends; Mueller & Chambers On The Inconsistency Of Arminianism

“Arminianism, like the Molinist theology on which it drew, is little more than the recrudescence of the late medieval semi-Pelagianism against which the Reformers struggled. Its tenets are inimical to the Pauline and Augustinian foundation of Reformed Protestantism.

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

Grace, Election, and Contingent Choice:
Arminius’s Gambit and the Reformed Response.

Philosophical and Theological Problems with Arminianism in all its various forms.

“1. Free will theology absolutizes the will of man and thereby reduces god to ontological equality with man. The knowledge of god is bound to the temporal actions of men. God cannot know the future acts and actions of men because those actions, products of a libertarian volition, do not yet exist in time. Thus God cannot know the future.

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