Greetings all!

I am sort of new here, and am very interested in theology discussions and the like.  I was browsing the forums, and noticed that under the Forum entitled "Organized Religion and Religious Movements Discussions", there is, of course, a sub-forum dedicated to "Calvinism".  However, I found a little unbalanced the fact that there is no forum dedicated to the flip-side, Arminianism.  The two, after all, go hand in hand.  They are historically "sparring partners", if you will.  There is no Calvinism without Arminianism, and vice versa.

Perhaps that is on purpose, or perhaps it is just an oversight.  Nevertheless, I think a balanced treatment would be nice. It seems to me that the Calvinist forum has Calvinists always forced into a position of defending their theology, whereas there is no Arminian forum dedicated to the posting of questions, concerns, and complaints against Arminianism.  What I mean is, those who adhere to Arminianism are not as often on the defensive.  Maybe because most of these forum members adhere to Arminian doctrines? (and perhaps without even realizing it!) Therefore, Arminianism itself is not challenged, and I would like to do that here.

What is Arminianism you may ask?  Well, if you take Calvinism, specifically, the 5 points of Calvinism (TULIP), and you reverse them exactly 180 degrees to get a mirror image, well, that's Arminianism.  See below:

Depravity:
Calvinism: Total depravity - no moral/spiritual ability to initiate a relationship with God due to the fallen, unregenerate nature
Arminianism: Partial Depravity (or, Total Depravity combined with Prevenient Grace) - man has a restored ability to initiate a relationship with God

Election:
Calvinism:  Unconditional - there was no foreseen good action or deed to cause God to turn towards you in mercy (that is the very definition of mercy/grace)
Arminianism: God foresaw the faith produced from the unregenerate heart, and responds with mercy, hence, conditional election

The Atonement:
Calvinism:  Sufficient for all, intended for believers (the elect)
Arminianism: Sufficient for all, but intended for nobody

Calling/Grace
Calvinism: Outward call of the gospel, inward call of the Holy Spirit: Effectual - being called always results in salvation (God's grace overcomes your resistance, and that's how you are saved)
Arminianism:  No such thing as the inward call of the Holy Spirit - therefore nobody at all is guaranteed to be saved (God's grace and purpose is trumped by man's will)

Perseverance
Calvinism: all of the saints, with the help and working of the Holy Spirit, will persevere in faith and good works until the end, and be eternally saved.  The elect are guaranteed to be kept in the faith since faith from the beginning was God's gift to the elect, not the elect's self-produced thing. Aka, once truly saved, always saved.
Arminianism: only some saints will persevere in faith and good works until the end. There is no guarantee that God will keep you in the faith since faith is seen as man's effort and contribution all along, not God's gift to the elect

I don't know about you people, but I personally find a lot of problems with the Arminian viewpoint.  At every step of the 5 points, I see contradictions with the Bible:

Of depravity:
Both Arminians (classical) and Calvinists believe in total depravity, (semi-Pelagians do not, however), but the Arminian view seeks to provide the "fix" to our depravity in a doctrine called "prevenient grace".  There's but one problem: the Bible never teaches prevenient grace. It never describes an enablement that God gives to all humans.  At every turn, we constantly learn of natural, fallen, unregenerate man's inabilities and unwillingness to repent and trust the thrice Holy God.  Christ himself declares "No man is able to come to me unless it is granted to him by the Father".  So, according to Christ, no man, not a single one, has an innate ability of any sort to initiate a relationship with God.  This is where Arminianism interjects with Prevention grace, but again, I do not see any biblical authors speaking of any such thing.  We read "no man, while in the flesh, can please God, or submit to God" in Romans 8:7-8.  By "in the flesh", Paul means unregenerate, not born again, without the Holy Spirit living inside you. In 1 Corinithians we read "The natural man" that is, the unregenerate man "cannot understand the spiritual things of God" and "he finds them foolishness". In John 3 we hear "You cannot see or enter the kingdom of God unless you are born again" (ie, regenerate).  I therefore conclude that at this point, Calvinism is Biblically accurate, and Arminianism is not.

Of election:
Both Arminians and Calvinists believe that God elected some people to eternal life before the universe was created.  The point of difference is this: Arminianism says that God's electing choice of an individual was based and grounded on the fact that God looked into the future, as it were, and "foresaw" that those people would, of their own ability, conjure up faith and produce a right attitude/thought/choice about Christ, and believe the gospel.  However, in light of the above problem of Depravity, I do not see how it is possible for a fallen, unregenerate man to do such a thing.  The Bible is clear, to me at least, that all unregenerate people are hostile to God and opposed to holiness.  We hear that the unregenerate man finds the gospel "foolishness" (1 Cor) and that he "never seeks God...he hates God" (Rom1, Rom 3).  We hear that the fallen, unregenerate man is "at enmity with God" (hostile towards God, at war with God, literally). (Rom 8) We hear that the unregenerate man "cannot hear the words of God because he is not of God" (but of the devil) (John 8).  We hear in John 10 that "people do not believe because they are not Christ's sheep" (John 10:26), and only Christ's sheep are the ones who "Hear his voice, and follow him".   We hear in Eph 2 that the unregenerate, unconverted man is "spiritually dead, a child of wrath, fulfilling and enjoying the lusts of the flesh, even as the rest of mankind".

In light of the Bible's anthropology (God's analysis of fallen man), as well as the glaring problem posed by point #1 (Depravity) I must conclude that Arminianism misses the mark at this point, and gives fallen, unregenerate man more credit than he deserves. Arminianism gives unregenerate man an ability that he simply does not have - an ability that the Bible does not attribute to him, but in fact says the opposite: that he does not have the ability to produce a desire or love or humility to God because he has a "heart of stone" that needs to first be replaced by God (Ezek 26) and he "is hostile towards God, finding the gospel foolishness".  He cannot come to Christ in faith unless God "grants it to him" or "draws him" (Greek-  literally: drag).  We learn from Christ that all who are granted and drawn come to Christ, for he says "All that the Father gives me will come to me" (Jn 6:37) - every single one.

Furthermore, not once does the Bible speak of God foreseeing self-produced faith and then choosing on that basis.  At every passage in the Bible where God's choice of men is regarded, it is always grounded on one thing and one thing only: that 5 letter word called Grace.  Grace is unearned and unmerited. Hence, unconditional. Eph 1 tells us that we were "chosen in Him..and predestined..according to the purpose of His will, to the praise of the glory of His grace".  Not once is faith mentioned as the reason for being chosen, but instead, God's purpose and glory is said to be the reason.

Arminians will tell you that Rom 8:29 and 1 Peter 1:2 speak of God's "foreknowledge", but their mistake is that foreknowledge is not omniscience.  Furthermore, what God "knows" in those verses is the people themselves, not actions of the people.  Nothing is said of God foreseeing an action, but rather, God "knows" (loves) the people themselves.  The object (grammatically) of God's "knowledge" is human beings.  And we know that when the Bible says God "knows" someone, it means in a loving, relational sense, not a passive, intellectual gathering of knowledge. Observe:
The Lord knows those who are His. (2 Tim 2:19).  
You only have I known among all the nations of the earth (Amos 3:2).
I never knew you, depart from me...(Matt 7).
Jesus knows the Father, just as the Father knows Him, and Jesus knows his sheep in the exact same way (John 10)

To be known by God is to be known in a special, particular, meaningful sense. Not simply to just be passively acknowledged to have done such-and-such actions.

(continued)

I already responded to these exact same questions on the other thread ;) Hopefully you're not just trolling now, are you? For shame..

No matter how they try to spin it otherwise, you have put your finger on one of the obvious problems with the Calvinsit view.  Double predestination is inherent in the system.

The Jew looked around him and saw that God often punished His people for the actions of their forefathers.  Being carried off in captivity and being made slaves to foreign powers and people was an extreme example.  The Jew began to think of that in terms more inclusive that just cause and effect of the events in the world and began to ascribe bad things in life to personal punishment both because of themselves and their forefathers.  Hence, the question to Jesus in John 9.

God recognized the problem early on and spoke against it.  Ezekiel 18 goes to great lengths to debunk the very idea that God would condemn anyone to hell for the actions of their father, or his father or his father's father, on and on.  It goes all the way back to Adam and the sons of Adam.

Dear Skala,

A God that creates people that He knows in advance will go to Hell and does nothing to help them works for Satan. He becomes Satan's helper. Can you see that?? You believe in a cruel and evil God who creates people that He knows they will 100% become Satan's playthings.

Let me get to your example about the boy playing with 2 sailboats in a river. Let's assume that the boy has placed a baby in each sailboat and the baby will surely die if the boy does not prevent the sailboat from going downstream!!! Well, if the boy decides to stop only one saiboat and knowingly lets the other go down (and lets the baby in that boat get killed), he's an evil boy. Actually, and rightly so, in our legal system that would be considered a "depraved indifference" and the boy will go to jail.

I hope you're not a lawyer because your positive/negative vs. positive/positive legalism would not fly with any jury. Bernie Madoff did not force people to give him their money, he just didn't do anything to stop them!! it's a postive/negative not a big deal!! Can you see how silly your argument sounds?

Try to see what kind of God you believe in. You seem like an honest person, but your futile effort to distinguish between two morally (and legally) identical acts makes me question your logic

Is this the same chauvanistic Paul who doesn't understand God?

I guess the boy wasn't smart enough to see that the river was flowing when he put BOTH boats in the water.  Both boats are not heading downstream by default.  The stupid little boy put the boats in the river.  If I had done something similar to that boy, my dad would have had my hide.  He probably would have taken the remaining boat away from me and given it to a boy who would have more sense.

However, your analogy of the stupid little boy seems very much in line with the Calvinist view of God.

Thank goodness, the Calvininst view of God isn't right.

And the rest of your explanation of double presdistination was pretty much along the lines that the stupid little boy might have given as an explanation of what happened to the other boat, i.e, it was really the boat's own fault.

No, I think you Calvinists call that unconditional election.  But as usual, you try to avoid the obvious that if He chooses to save one but not the other, then he has ipso facto chosen not to save the other one.  I realize that you have all manner of excuses and hedges against that, but no matter, it is a fact. It is an inescapable thruth.  Even more so when you place that on top of original sin which is a condition that only God can or could impose.  God didn't just happen along after the fact (I guess the boy just happened to find two boats floating downstream).

By the way some of us Christians call that thing wrong.

Conditional is not the same thing as merited.