METHODIST

QUARTERLY REVIEW.

JULY, 1879.

ART. I.-ARMINIANISM AND ARMINIUS.* ARMINIANISM, as the customary antithesis to Calvinism, is, within the limits of the evangelical doctrines, the theology that tends to freedom in opposition to the theology of necessity, or absolutism. This contrast rises into thought among all nations that attain to reflection and philosophy. So in Greek and Roman thinking, Stoicism and all materialistic atheism held that mind, will, is subject to just as fixed laws in its volitions as physical events are in their successions. When, however, men like Plato and Cicero rose to a more transcendent sense of moral responsibility, especially of eternal responsibility, they came to say, like Cicero, "Those who maintain an eternal series of causes despoil the mind of man of free-will, and bind it in the necessity of fate."

Theistic fatalism, or Predestination, consists in the predetermination of the Divine Will, which, determining alike the volitions of the will and the succession of physical events, reduces both to a like unfreedom; but those who hold Predestination very uniformly hold also to volitional necessity, or the subjection of will in its action to the control of strongest motive force. . And as the Divine Will is held subject to the same law, so Necessity, as master of God, man, and the universe, becomes a universal and absolute Fate. This doctrine, installed by

*The above article is here inserted from "Johnson's Universal Cyclopædia," by courtesy of the proprietor of that work, A. J. Johnson, Esq.

FOURTH SERIES, VOL. XXXI.-27

Saint Augustine, and still more absolutely by John Calvin, in Christian theology, is from them called Augustinianism, or, more usually, Calvinism.

In opposition to this theology, Arminianism maintains that in order to true responsibility, guilt, penalty, especially eternal penalty, there must be in the agent a free-will; and in a true responsible free-will the freedom must consist in the power, even in the same circumstances and under the same motives, of choosing either way. No man can justly be eternally damned, according to Arminianism, for a choice or action which he cannot help. If fixed by Divine decree or volitional necessity to the particular act, he cannot be held responsible or justly punished. In all such statements, however, it is presupposed, in order to a just responsibility, that the agent has not responsibly abdicated or destroyed his own power. No agent can plead in bar of responsibility any incapacity which he has freely and willfully brought upon himself. It is also to be admitted that there may be suffering which is not penalty --finite sufferings for which there are compensations, and for which every one would take his chance for the sake of life. But eternal suffering, for which there is no compensation, inflicted as a judicial penalty on the basis of justice, can be justly inflicted only for avoidable sin. If Divine decree or volitional necessity determine the act, it is irresponsible, and judicial penalty is unjust.

Arminianism also holds that none but the person who freely commits the sin can be guilty of that sin. One person cannot be guilty of another person's sin. A tempter may be guilty of tempting another to sin, but then one is guilty of the sin, and the other of solely the sin of temptation. There can thus be no vicarious guilt: and as punishment, taken strictly, can be only infliction for guilt upon the guilty, there can literally and strictly be no vicarious punishment. If innocent Damon die for Pythias guilty of murder, Damon is not guilty because he takes Pythias' place in dying, and his death is not to him a punishment, but a suffering, which is a substitute for another man's punishment. The doer of sin is solely the sinner, the guilty, or the punished. These preliminary statements will elucidate the issues between Calvinism and Arminianism on the following points:

1. Foreordination.-Calvinism affirms that God does, unchangeably and eternally, foreordain whatsoever comes to pass. That is, God, from all eternity, predetermines not only all physical events, but all the volitions of responsible agents. To this Arminianism objects that the predetermination of the agent's volitions destroys the freedom of his will; that it makes God the responsible predeterminer and willer of sin; and that it makes every sinner to say that his sin accords with the Divine Will, and, therefore, so far as himself is concerned, is right. It makes God first decree the sin, and then punish the sinner for the sin decreed. The Arminian theory is this: God does, from all eternity, predetermine the laws of nature and the succession of physical and necessary events; but as to free moral agents, God, knowing all possible futurities, does choose that plan of his own conduct which, in view of what each agent will ultimately in freedom do, will bring out the best results. His system is a system of his own actions. And God's predeterminations of his own acts are so far contingent as they are based on his prerecognition of what the agent will freely do; yet as his omniscience knows the future with perfect accuracy, so he will never be deceived nor frustrated in his plans and providences.

Some Arminians deny God's foreknowledge, on the ground of the intrinsic impossibility of a future contingency being foreknown. As the performance of a contradictory act is impossible, intrinsically, even to Omnipotence, so, say they, the knowability of a future contingency, being an essential contradiction, is impossible even to Omniscience. A contradiction is a nothing; and it is very unnecessary to say in behalf of God's omnipotence that he can do all things, and all nothings too. So it is equally absurd to say in behalf of his omniscience that he knows all things and all nothings too. The exclusion of contradictions does not limit God's omnipotence or omniscience, but defines it. Arminians do not condemn this reasoning, but generally hold that their theory is maintainable against Calvinism on the assumption of foreknowledge. They deny, as against the Calvinist, that foreknowledge has any influence upon the future of the act, as predetermination has. Predetermination fixes the act-foreknowledge is fixed by the act. In foreordination God determines the act as he pleases;

in foreknowledge the agent fixes the prescience as he pleases. In the former case God is alone responsible for the creature's act; in the latter case God holds the creature responsible, and a just divine government becomes possible. Yet most Arminians, probably, would say, with the eminent philosopher, Dr. Henry More, If the divine foreknowledge of the volitions of a free agent contradicts the freedom, then the freedom, and not the foreknowledge, is to be believed.

2. Divine Sovereignty.-Calvinism affirms that if man is free God is not a sovereign. Just so far as man is free to will either way, God's power is limited. Arminians reply that if man is not free, God is not a sovereign, but sinks to a mere mechanist. If man's will is as fixed as the physical machinery of the universe, then all is machinery and not a government, and God is a machinist and not a ruler. The higher man's freedom of will is exalted above mechanism, so much higher is God elevated as a sovereign. Here, according to Arminians, Calvinism degrades and destroys God's sovereignty, and Arminianism exalts it; that the freedom of man no more limits God's power than do the laws of nature by him established; that in both cases, equally, there is simply a self-limitation by God of the exercise of his power; that Arminianism holds to the absoluteness of God's omnipotence just as truly as Calvinism, and to the grandeur of his sovereignty even more exaltedly.

3. Imputation of Adam's Sin.-Calvinism affirms that Adam's posterity is truly guilty of Adam's sin, so as to be eternally and justly punishable therefor without a remedy. As guilty of this sin, God might have the whole race born into existence under a curse, without the power or means of deliverance, and consigned to eternal punishment. Upon this Arminians look as a dogma violative of the fundamental principles of eternal justice. They deny that guilt and literal punishment can, in the nature of things, be thus transferred. Their theory is, that upon Adam's sin a Saviour was forthwith interposed for the race as a previous condition to the allowance of the propagation of the race by Adam, and a provision for inherited disadvantages. Had not a Redeemer been provided, mankind, after Adam, would not have been born. The race. inherits the nature of fallen Adam, not by being held guilty

of his sin, but by the law of natural descent, just as all posterity inherit the species-qualities, physical, mental, and moral, of the progenitor. Before his fall the presence of the Holy Spirit with Adam in fullness supernaturally empowered him to perfect holiness-the tree of life imparted to him a supernatural immortality. Separated from both these, he sunk into a mere nature, subject to appetite and Satan. The race in Adam, without redemption, is totally incapable of salvation; yet under Christ it is placed upon a new redemptive probation, is empowered by the quickening Spirit given to all, and through Christ may, by the exercise of free agency, attain eternal life.

4. Reprobation.-Of the whole mass of mankind thus involved in guilt and punishment for sin they never actually committed, Calvinism affirms that God has left a large share "passed by "—that is, without adequate means of recovery, and with no intention to recover them-and this from the "good pleasure of his will" and for a display of his "glorious justice." The other portion of mankind God does, from "mere good pleasure," without any superior preferability in them, "elect" or choose, and confers upon them regeneration and eternal life, "all to the praise of his glorious grace." The Arminians pronounce such a proceeding arbitrary, and fail to see in it either "justice" or "glorious grace." The reprobation seems to them to be injustice, and the "grace," with such an accompaniment, unworthy the acceptance of honorable free agents. Election and reprobation, as Arminianism holds them, are conditioned upon the conduct and voluntary character of the subjects. All submitting to God and righteousness, by repentance of sin and true self-consecrating faith, do meet the conditions of that election; all who persist in sin present the qualities upon which reprobation depends. And as this preference for the obedient and holy, and rejection of the disobedient and unholy, lies in the very nature of God, so this election and reprobation are from before the foundations of the world.

5. Philosophical or Volitional Necessity.-Calvinism maintains the doctrine that all volitions are determined and fixed by the force of strongest motive, just as the strokes of a clockhammer are fixed and determined by the strongest force. The