This article originally appeared in the Evangelical Journal 9 (1991) 27-39, and was taken from the website of John Mark Hicks, specifically this page: http://johnmarkhicks.files.wordpress.com/2008/12/righteousness-of-saving-faith.doc.

Please click on the attachment to view John Mark Hicks, "Righteousness of Saving Faith: Arminian Versus Remonstrant Grace".

What is the purpose of giving people grace that God knows will never believe anyway?

The Scholasticism
By his antecedent will God wills that all people will be saved if they repent and believe, and he funds all peoples and persons with the grace to begin the journey of salvation. Consequent to the actions of persons, God renders judgment. For example, a judge may antecedently will all the citizens to live, yet consequent to the fact that some decide to be murderers, he wills the criminals to be punished. Likewise God antecedently wills all persons should be brought to eternal blessedness, yet consequent to the operation of other wills who reject grace and follow another way, God wills that those people face the consequences of their actions (cf. Rom. 2:6; 2 Cor. 5:10 and the like).

He Will Save His People from Their Sins:
How Calvinists Don’t Bother Looking from the Other Side

One of the more inane prooftexts for Calvinism is Matt 1:21, “…for he will save his people from their sins.” Calvinists argue that this is a statement of definiteness, that it does not say that Jesus will merely provide the opportunity of salvation for “his people,” but instead, that Jesus will definitely save his people. They claim that this flies in the face of Arminian assertions that through Jesus, God provides a way for everyone to be saved.

The quick Arminian retort is simple: “What!? Do you Calvinists think that Arminians deny that Jesus will definitely save his people??? Of course, we Arminians affirm that Jesus will definitely save his people, just as the text says.”

The claim that this is a Calvinist proof text for definite atonement registers 9.8 on the silly scale.

Please click on the attachment to view John Aloisi, "THE PARACLETE’S MINISTRY OF CONVICTION: ANOTHER LOOK AT JOHN 16:8–11," Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society 47/1 (March 2004) 55–69.

Please click on the attachment to view Laurence Womack, "An Examination and Defense of the Five Articles of Arminianism".

Laurence Womack (1612-1685 AD) was a seventeenth century Arminian Puritan Bishop. This examination and defense of the five articles of the Remonstrants is excerpted from a larger work published in 1638, which can be found here, wherefrom this excerpt was taken.

This is actually a book published in 1890 and amounting to 223 pages in the attached file. Please click on the attachment to view D. Fiske Harris, Calvinism: Contrary to God's Word and Man's Moral Nature.

This material was taken from http://www.gospeltruth.net/harris/har_cal_toc.htm.

This article was taken from http://www.imarc.cc/apolg/history7.html

CALVISM DEFINED
By
Richard Watson

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Over the centuries, Calvinists have so successfully vilified Arminianism that people who are Arminian are afraid to say so. This is true even though Arminianism is the default theological position of Christian Protestantism; indeed, many people are Arminian and don’t even know it, and even deny it. Arminianism is so widespread that even the strongest Calvinist churches are filled with Arminians. It is ironic, then, that people are afraid to say they’re Arminian; for example, many Independent and Southern Baptists are typically Arminian, but nonetheless often call themselves Calvinists!

The purpose of this survey is to help people who have an Arminian theology realize that they are Arminians and to help them understand that it is okay to be Arminian. The questions deal with the most pertinent issues which define Arminianism and distinguish Arminianism from Calvinism.

1. Do you believe that Jesus died for every human being?

Please click on the attachment to view Brenda B. Colijn, "“LET US APPROACH”: SOTERIOLOGY IN THE EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS", Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society 39/4 (December 1996) 571–586.

The charge of heresy sometimes gets made in the Arminianism/Calvinism debate. So we thought it might be helpful to include this article that considers the nature of heresy from a more exegetical point of view than usual, even though it is not specifically concerned about the Arminianism/Calvinism debate.

Please click on the attachment to view Craig L. Blomberg, "THE NEW TESTAMENT DEFINITION OF HERESY (OR WHEN DO JESUS AND THE APOSTLES REALLY GET MAD?)", Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society 45/1 (March 2002) 59–72.

Please click on the attachment to view Leo G. Cox, "Prevenient Grace-A Wesleyan View," Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society 12 (1969): 147-60.

Please click on the attachment to view Douglas W. Kennard, "Petrine Redemption: Its Meaning and Extent", Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society 30/4 (December 1987) 399-405.

Please click on the attachment to view Robert E. Picirilli's response to open theism in his article entitled, "AN ARMINIAN RESPONSE TO JOHN SANDERS’S THE GOD WHO RISKS: A THEOLOGY OF PROVIDENCE", Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society 44/3 (September 2001) 467–91.

Please click on the attachment to view James Beilby, "DIVINE ASEITY, DIVINE FREEDOM: A CONCEPTUAL PROBLEM FOR EDWARDSIAN-CALVINISM", Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society 47/4 (December 2004) 647–58.

This article derives from: http://jmleonardfamily.googlepages.com/eternalsecurityandexegeticaloverv...

and may be viewed there or by clicking on the pdf attachment. The formatting at the above website is better.

Please click one of the attachments* to view Bruce Hollenbach, "Lest They Should Turn and Be Forgiven: Irony", Bible Translator 34.3 (July 1983) 312-21.

The ATLA Religion Database with ATLASerials provides the following abstract of this article:

"An exegesis of this phrase [i.e. "lest they should turn and be forgiven"] in Isaiah, Mark, and John, which treats it as irony, shows that it never expresses a reluctance on the part of God or Jesus to see anyone turn and be forgiven. It expresses rather reluctance on the part of the addressees of the divine message. Irony as a figure is described and illustrated. The notes list other occurances of irony in the Scriptures, discuss the question of "hardening", and summarize earlier commentary on this phrase in the NT."

This article was written by Pastor Phillip M. Way, a five point Calvinist! We include it on our site because it criticizes the hyper-Calvinistic view that one must believe Calvinism to be saved, as represented by the statements of C. Matthew McMahon, the operator of the Calvinist website "A Puritan's Mind." The fact that it comes from a five point Calvinist helps show how extreme and unreasonable such a view is. Please be aware that SEA does not approve of everything in the article. For example, the author implies that Arminianism is heresy. However, he must mean this in the sense of "false teaching in non-essential doctrine," since one of the main points of the article is that that non-Calvinists can be saved.

How Does Grace Work in Arminian-Wesleyan Theology?

by Eric Landstrom

How grace is understood to work is the key to unlocking any Christian theology or theological tradition. As such, I thought it beneficial to unpack the Wesleyan or traditionally Methodist view of how grace is understood to work. The Wesleyan view should be of particular interest to Christians influenced by eastern theological thought since John Wesley, in his later years, backed away from the doctrine of original sin in favor of ancestral sin.* As a result, there are several "Wesleyanisms" that bear Wesley's name that stem from different points of Wesley's own theological development. Here I present Wesley's mature view via Tom Oden's works.**

Discussion: Grace and Sin

by Eric Landstrom