40 Questions About Arminianism

40 Questions

by J. Matthew Pinson, Benjamin L. Merkle (Editor)

The actual life and teaching of Jacobus Arminius are often unknown or misunderstood. Answers beyond a basic caricature can be elusive. In 40 Questions About Arminianism , however, J. Matthew Pinson combines solid historical research with biblical and doctrinal precision to address the following questions and An accessible question-and-answer format helps readers pursue the issues that interest them most, with additional resources available at . Questins regarding historical backgrounds and the Bible encourage a broad understanding of historic and contemporary Arminianism.

". . . the best resource in print that provides trustworthy insight into a comparison of Arminianism and Calvinism . . . the most comprehensive book available on the essentials of Arminian theology." -- W. Stephen Gunter , Duke Divinity School

"Anyone who wants to be thoroughly informed about Arminianism must read 40 Questions About Arminianism. " -- Roger E. Olson , Baylor University

" 40 Questions About Arminianism may well rank as the best available exposition of evangelical Arminianism . . . a gracious and profoundly learned response to the biblical Calvinism that I embrace." -- Michael A. G. Haykin , Southern Baptist Theological Seminary

" 40 Questions About Arminianism conveys a beautiful irenic tone." -- Timothy Tennent , Asbury Theological Seminary

Genres: Theology, Christian

529 pages, Kindle Edition

Published April 19, 2022

About the author

J. Matthew Pinson is president of Welch College in Nashville, Tennessee. He holds a master's degree from Yale and a doctorate from Vanderbilt and has authored or edited several books, including Four Views on Eternal Security and A Free Will Baptist Handbook. He lives in the Nashville area with his wife, Melinda, and their children, Anna and Matthew.

Reviews

[Jeff Blair · Rating 5 out of 5]

A.W. Tozer said, “What comes into our minds when we think about God is the most important thing about us” (Knowledge of the Holy, 7). Tozer is right, but there is a more crucial question: What comes into God’s mind when God thinks about us? Can every human being know that God loves him or her with the kind of love that would send His one and only Son to save each and every one of us? Not the lesser kind of love that is benevolently disposed toward us to send rain, sunshine, and food, but the deepest kind of love that makes the greatest sacrifice. When God thinks of me, does God love me with *that* kind of love? What is the nature of the love of the God who is love (1 John 4:7-8)? Does God love me? Does God love my children? Does God love my neighbor? How does God exercise His sovereignty? What kind of God is God? What kind of being is a human being? These and other profound existential questions humans have wrestled with for ages are at the center of the book, 40 Questions About Arminianism by Matt Pinson, President of Welch College in Nashville. There’s a lot at stake here.

I remember having a conversation about this when I was a seventh grader with my wrestling coach. Three of us were in his car on the way to the state wrestling tournament. I was riding in the front seat, and he told me that each human is like a paddle that he made (he was also the shop teacher), and it was up to him to make whatever kind of paddle he wanted to make. I said, “you’re talking about predestination.” His eyes got big and he said, “how do you know anything about that?!.” When you are Free Will Baptist in the south, you get into conversations like this early in life, because people want to know what the difference is between a Free Will Baptist and a Southern Baptist. I’ve been thinking about this question my entire life, and some of my best friends in ministry and in seminary have disagreed with me about my conclusions. This has always been fine with me.

I have learned to work hard to understand what they believe and why they believe it based on their dead-level best reading of scripture. We still disagree, but we learned that to refuse to caricature one another’s positions is an act of Christian charity. No one appreciates being caricatured. Everyone wants to be understood. If you disagree with me or even despise me after you’ve understood me, I can live with that. But if you disagree with me and despise my position while failing to understand what I believe, this is both unloving and dishonest. This scenario goes both ways when it comes to the Calvinism/Arminianism conversation. That’s one of the reasons this book by Matt Pinson is so good and so valuable. Matt is a Christian man who deeply loves his Calvinist brothers and sisters. Since he loves them with Christian love, he has done the hard work of understanding them. This love does not diminish his forthright honesty in critiquing the Calvinism of his dearly-loved brothers and sisters. The differences are not in the essentials of the Christian faith, but they are deep and significant and thus require candor.

Dr. Pinson is a careful historian, theologian, and exegete who is in it for the Church and the Kingdom. In this important book, he doesn’t dodge any issue but deals with the central questions head-on, always biblically and with humility. Pinson’s primary contention is that Reformed Arminianism is more faithful to the biblical text.

This book is one of those books which I find myself underlining more text than not. There is no fluff while also achieving maximum accessibility, which is no small task.

The book is divided into Five Sections: Historical Questions, Atonement and Justification, Free Will and Grace, Election and Regeneration, Perseverance and Apostasy. In this short recommendation, I will provide just a sampling of the sort of content found throughout the book. (The reader should keep in mind that each quote has a larger context from which I have lifted it in order to provide a sense of the nature of the book.)

If there is one key idea in the book, I think it is this one which is repeated throughout:

Like all Arminians, Reformed Arminians diverge from Calvinism on how one comes to be in a state of grace (e.g., unconditional election, irresistible grace). Yet, unlike many other Arminians, they agree with Calvinists on what it means to be in a state of grace (e.g., penal substitution, imputation of the active and passive obedience of Christ; progressive as opposed to entire sanctification). 3

Note that Reformed Arminians agree with Calvinists on what it means to be in a state of grace but disagree with Calvinists on how one *comes to be* in a state of grace.

Part 1: Introductory and Historical Questions

In short, (Arminius) agreed with Calvin and his followers on what it means to be in a state of grace, but he differed from them on how one comes to be in a state of grace. Thus, he agreed with Calvin on the depth of human sin and depravity and on what it means to be redeemed from sin: what Christ did to atone for sin, how that is applied in justification, and how Christians live it out in sanctification and spirituality. Yet he disagreed with Calvin on the details of how one comes to be in a state of grace: the doctrines of particular and resistible grace, and unconditional election. In reality, one could say that full-fledged Arminians are “one-point Calvinists.” 35

Instead of unconditional election, (Reformed Arminians) believe that God sovereignly decreed that election be conditional; that is, God’s election or predestination of a believer to eternal salvation is conditioned on God’s foreknowledge of the believer in union with Christ. Instead of limited atonement, Arminians believe that Christ died for everyone and genuinely desires everyone’s salvation. Instead of irresistible grace, Arminians believe that God, in his own mysterious manner and time, influences everyone with his enabling, calling, and drawing grace, without taking away their ability to resist it. 36

The earliest Remonstrants, following Arminius, said plainly that “man does not possess saving grace of himself, nor of the energy of his free will, inasmuch as in his state of apostasy and sin he can of and by himself neither think, will, nor do any thing that is truly good.” Thus, without divine grace, humanity is characterized by utter depravity and inability in spiritual things. They went on to say that the “grace of God is the beginning, continuance, and accomplishment of all good, even to the extent that the regenerate man himself, without prevenient or assisting, awakening, following and cooperative grace, can neither think, will, nor do good, nor withstand any temptations to evil; so that all good deeds or movements that can be conceived must be ascribed to the grace of God in Christ.”8 In this sentiment, these earliest Remonstrants followed Arminius. 38

Unlike some Calvinists who believe that it would be “wasteful” for Christ to die for the reprobate and that therefore God sent his son to die only for the elect, Arminians believe that God’s desire that everyone be saved entails that Christ’s atonement is for everyone (universal or general atonement, sometimes called general provision). This gracious divine desire and provision is the basic thrust of Arminianism, which makes Arminians skeptical of the particularism of Calvinism. This is why it is so hard for Arminians to understand the notion of many Calvinists that there are, in essence, two wills in God for everyone’s salvation. The latter distinguish between a revealed will that desires everyone’s salvation and loves everyone and a secret will that desires the salvation of only the elect and salvifically loves only them.
42

This grace of God is the beginning, continuance, and accomplishment of all good, even to the extent that the regenerate man himself, without prevenient or assisting, awakening, following and cooperative grace, can neither think, will, nor do good, nor withstand any temptations to evil; so that all good deeds or movements that can be conceived must be ascribed to the grace of God in Christ. But with respect to the mode of the operation of this grace, it is not irresistible, since it is written concerning many, that they have resisted the Holy Spirit (Acts 7, and elsewhere in many places). 44

Part 2: Questions About the Atonement and Justification

Forlines (a Reformed Arminian theologian) strongly emphasizes union with Christ, appealing to Romans 6:1–11; Galatians 2:19–20; 2 Corinthians 5:15–16; and 2 Timothy 2:11. In language similar to that of Arminius, Forlines explains that, in union with Christ, the whole redemptive work of Christ becomes ours, and our sin becomes his. In that union we engage in “identification with Christ” so that “his history becomes our history” and “our history becomes his history.” His fulfillment of the law becomes ours, and our sin is laid on him. 103

While Reformed Arminians assert that the believer has the ability finally to resist grace and apostatize from the faith, their concept of assurance is grounded in the active and passive obedience of Christ imputed to believers, not in believers living out the imparted righteousness of Christ. 106

The reason Arminians affirm the gratia universalis is that they believe that biblical texts such as Jeremiah 22:29, Joel 2:28, Luke 2:10, John 1:9, John 6:44, John 12:32, John 16:8, Romans 2:4, and Titus 2:1 teach that God is reaching out to everyone, in some way, with his prevenient (pre-justifying, enabling) grace, pouring out his spirit on everyone, enlightening everyone, drawing everyone, convicting everyone, giving grace to everyone. These passages are about God’s prevenient grace. Why do Arminians think these texts teach that God is reaching out to everyone with his prevenient grace? Because Scripture passages such as Ezekiel 33:11; Acts 10:34; 17:30; 1 Timothy 2:4; and 2 Peter 3:9 teach that God’s salvific purpose is universal. Thus Arminians, together with the vast sweep of the Christian tradition, believe that the reason Christ died for everyone, and the reason the Spirit is calling everyone, is that the Father’s genuine desire is that everyone be saved. 110

Part 3: Questions About Free Will and Grace

I will share only one passage from this section, but note strong claim made:

How Calvinism Detracts from God’s Glory. Arminians… emphasize that Calvinism is the system that detracts from God’s glory, which is rooted in his justice, because the logical outcome of its system makes God the author of evil. 169

Part 4: Questions About Election and Regeneration

Here Pinson interacts with the “hard passages” such as Ephesians 1 (also John 6 and Romans 8, etc) head on-without sidestepping (giving facile answers) or sideswiping (unfairly mischaracterizing, strawmanning).

Commenting on Ephesians 1:4, Arminius argued that the Calvinist view of election is not Christ-centered enough, not gospel-centered enough. In that view, he said, “Christ does not seem to me to obtain that place which He merits and which the Apostle assigns to Him.” Calvinism unintentionally re- duces Christ and his merit to the mere means by which salvation occurs, since it makes salvation’s cause unconditional election. Thus Calvinism cannot re- ally say that God elected us in Christ; it must say that God elected us to be in Christ. 248

J. K. S. Reid agreed, characterizing the Calvinist view as being that “Christ is merely the exhibitor of a decision already made in an eternity in which He has Himself been, even if existent, at least inoperative…” Christ’s work is the meritorious cause of election. For Arminius, with his Christocentric view of election, Calvinism gets it backward, emphasizing God’s absolute choice of individual sinners out of the mass of humanity, then treating Christ and his merit almost as an afterthought. 249

Thus, far from being a Calvinist proof text, Arminians see Ephesians 1:4 as providing grave difficulty for Calvinism. If Paul had wished to say that we are chosen to be in Christ, he simply would have said that. As Jack Cottrell states, “The elect are chosen in (en) Christ, that is, because they are in Christ; they are not chosen into (eis) Christ, that is, in order that they may be in Christ. They are in Christ before the foundation of the world not in reality but in the foreknowledge of God.” 249

Calvinists struggle to explain how people can be elect in Christ without God’s taking their in-Christ status into account in his decree of election. 249


Part 5: Questions About Perseverance and Apostasy

Here, in addition to an extremely helpful discussion of the thorny question of “falling from grace,”, Pinson lays out the Reformed Arminian, Stephen Ashby’s, summary of the Reformed Arminian position on apostasy:
1) Prior to being drawn and enabled, one is unable to believe . . . able only to resist. 2) Having been drawn and enabled, but prior to regeneration, one is able to believe . . . able also to resist. 3) After one believes, God then regenerates;one is able to continue believing . . . able also to resist. 4) Upon resisting to the point of unbelief, one is unable again to believe . . . able only to resist.

The reason persons 1 and 4 are unable to believe and are able only to resist God is that God is not drawing or enabling them. And “apart from [him] you can do nothing” (John 15:5).
11

The above selection of passages obviously does not begin to do justice to the depth, breadth, and accessibility of 40 Questions on Arminianism. The bottom line is that this is the best, wisest, most careful, most generous, and most helpful book on the question I’ve ever read. Arminians and our Calvinist brothers and sisters alike will benefit tremendously from reading and reflecting on the arguments in this book.

[Brian · Rating 5 out of 5]

I’m not sure that there has been a more divisive subject in Evangelical Christianity over the last few decades than that of Calvinism and Arminianism. It has resulted in a veritable “Corinthian” standoff, with some chanting “I am of Calvin,” others hollering “I am of Arminius,” and another group standing in the middle piously chanting “we just follow the Bible.” This debate has been characterized by a lack of informed dialogue, mischaracterizations, and plenty of burned strawmen. As a result, there is baggage weighing down almost any term associated with this argument. Walking into a church and yelling “God is sovereign over everything!” might just be the theological version of yelling “fire” in a crowded theater.

Amid the yelling, poor exegesis, and emotional argumentation, we need some careful conversations about these issues. We need scholars who lean to one side or the other to contribute to a theological discussion about the relevant texts and theological issues facing Calvinists, Arminians, and “Biblicists.” Matthew Pinson helps this conversation tremendously. My first clue that this was going to be a good book was when I saw that Michael Haykin had written an endorsement. When you can get someone who disagrees with you to give a glowing review of something you’ve written about the very subject matter you disagree over, you have accomplished something.

Pinson’s book is well laid out. The “40 Question” format serves his purpose well in that he does not need to flesh out an entire Arminian theology, but rather can tackle the most relevant issues in the current debate by simply answering questions. The author’s chapters are structured well and are carefully written. I appreciated his attention to detail in the different stripes of both Arminian and Calvinist theology. The reader will come away understanding that this is often not an “either-or” debate, but rather a series of questions and issues that one must determine where one falls. I was personally challenged and blessed by Pinson’s discussion of Reformed Arminianism and how it compares with other varieties, and how it compares and contrasts with the beliefs of Calvin. This section, along with the other historical material in section one dealing with the life of Arminius and the Synod of Dort were hugely helpful in shaping my understanding of Arminianism and of the historical context in which much of the original debate took place.

In section two, Pinson tackles questions about atonement and justification. This section made the distinction that exists even among Arminian theologians about the nature of the atonement and the significance of the work of Christ. The author then tackles the subject of the nature of the atonement. Did Christ die for all or just for the elect? I greatly appreciated Pinson’s careful textual work here and his spirit of trying to accurately represent the views of his opponents. Some of the most “controversial” material will be found in this section, and the reader would do well to read carefully with Bible in hand.

Sections three and four deal with free will and election and regeneration. What I want to highlight here is Pinson’s argument against Pelagianism or Semi-Pelagianism. Arminians have long been accused of having Pelagian skeletons in their closet. Pinson disputes this characterization, and I believe fairly rejects the underlying assumptions of those claims. His argument that both Arminians and Calvinists are helpless to respond to the grace of God without God drawing them is clear and helpful.

The final section of the book addresses perseverance and apostasy. The author gives an excellent summary of varying positions and carefully explains his own. I’m not sure that I’ve ever read something in which I agreed so much with the exegesis while disagreeing with the conclusions as I have in this section.

Whatever your theological persuasion, you need to read this book if you have any interest at all in soteriology and eternal security. Pinson is a solid writer with a gracious demeanor, and when Haykin calls the book possibly “the best available exposition of evangelical Arminianism,” he is not bloviating. I don’t agree with much of the theological conclusions in the book, but if you want to interact with Arminianism at the textual level, and not just burn down strawmen, this is a book for you.

[Nicholas Lewis · Rating 5 out of 5]

Matthew Pinson lays out very strong evidence for a reformed Arminian position with sound exegesis. I was very impressed with his research and found his arguments compelling while also clearly stating both sides succinctly and fairly. I also believe Pinson has done a good job critiquing Wesleyan Arminianism, helping clearly explain an Arminianism that stands on more solid church historical convictions while also being exegetically faithful to the biblical text. I highly recommend it!

[Jeremy Head · Rating 3 out of 5]

A well written defense of a position I disagree with. My faith in the God who has “ordained whatsoever comes to pass” was strengthened through Pinson’s attempt at defending man’s ultimate self-determination in salvation. I appreciated the charitable nature of the book and the accurate portrayal of Calvinism as he attempted to refute it. Most anti-Calvinist books that I have read misrepresent the position and by doing so add nothing to the conversation.

[Dan Blair · Rating 5 out of 5]

very informative.

[Xavier Tan · Rating 5 out of 5]

I enjoyed this read, and I especially liked how, concerning the issue of grace, Pinson addresses and points to Biblical texts where God seems to leave room for humans to resist His grace (Question 24: Does the Bible Teach That People Can Resist God’s Grace?). He also addresses proof-texts that Calvinists often appeal to (Question 25: How Do Arminians Interpret the Argument for Irresistible Grace from John 6?, Question 26: How Do Arminians Interpret Other Proof Texts for Irresistible Grace?, Questions 27-29: Does [Ephesians 1:4-11/Romans 8:28-30/Romans 9:6-23] Teach Unconditional or Conditional Election?). He does the above by rigorously citing opponents (Calvinists) and Arminius himself, demonstrating that he was not a Pelagian (far from it), and that the Arminian position rests firmly on Scripture and tradition.

However, I found the way Pinson handled Wesleyanism a bit of a pity. Pinson distinguishes between Reformed Arminianism and Wesleyan Arminianism through means such as asserting that the latter teaches that the atonement only applies to pre-conversion sins (citing a modern scholar, not Wesley himself), and that Wesley "rejected the entirety of the doctrine of imputation", curiously not citing any source for this latter claim. For a book that so rigorously cites its Calvinist opponents, I wish Pinson had carried that same rigour when addressing his Wesleyan opponents closer to him (if they are indeed opponents at all, as Pinson seems to claim).