08/06/2024
We are neither A-Arminians nor C-Calvinists but B-Balanced, Biblical or Biblicists and Baptists. Please Read until the end and Learn the Truth!
THE EXTREME SOVEREIGNTY VIEW—Calvinism
God's Control
This position understands sovereignty in the strong sense of divine control over and determination of the entire universe and of all actions in it. God is in complete charge of all that happens and will happen, including all free choices of His creatures. Nothing we do can change His fixed plan, which He preordained from all eternity. The future is not open to being “helped” in its formation by our free actions.
God's Foreknowledge
God knows with certainty everything that will happen in the future, including all free actions. Nothing can change this; it is fixed and immutable. Since God is omniscient, He cannot be wrong about anything. Hence, if He knows what's going to happen and He knows everything that's going to happen then it must happen exactly as He foreknew it would happen.
God's Predestination
God can make infallible predictions—ones that must come to pass. Indeed, He has predetermined from all eternity every event in the universe, including the salvation of the elect and the damnation of the non-elect. Predestination is not based on His foreknowledge; His election of some to salvation is a free choice of His mercy, based only on His will. This is an unconditional election of some to salvation and of leaving others for damnation.
Man's Fallen State
Fallen human beings, dead in sin, do not even have the ability to receive the gift of salvation unless God first works in them by His Spirit and gives them, and them alone, the faith to believe in Him. Thus, regeneration comes before faith, and only the regenerate can believe. The rest are dead and incapable of belief. The rest are dead and incapable of belief.
God's Grace
Human will plays no part in our salvation; we are saved by God's will and God's will alone. Salvation cannot be sought, attained, or even received as a gift—it is wholly and completely of God, whose saving love is a voluntary act of mercy. Because of man's sinful state, God did not have to save anyone, but out of sheer grace He decided from all eternity to save some. These, and these alone, are the ones for whom Christ died. Only these are operated on by God's irresistible grace and brought to ultimate salvation.
Man's Free Choice
What we call “free choice” actually is determined by God; we can- not act contrary to His sovereign will. Even those who “freely” reject God do so in accordance with His sovereign will. Hence, the elect are predestined by God to heaven and the non-elect to hell (or, at least, were not chosen by God for heaven). True freedom is not freedom to do good or evil but only to do good. God is free and cannot do evil. Therefore, the ultimate freedom (attained only in heaven) is freedom from evil, not any freedom to do evil. Freedom means “doing what we desire,” and only God can give the desire to do good; any desire to do evil comes from our own evil nature. Fallen humans have no free will in the sense of having a self-determined choice to accept God's gift of salvation. In short, this view places sovereignty over free will. Any act of free will with regard to salvation comes only as a result of God producing it by His grace. Even the will to reject God is not self-determined but, rather, is an act ordained by God for the condemnation of the wicked, just as an act for Christ is one given by God for the salvation of the elect.
THE EXTREME FREE WILL VIEW—Arminianism
God's Control
This position maintains that God does not have rigid control of the universe; He gave away some of His sovereignty to His creatures when He gave them free choice. God does not determine human free acts; He reacts to them as He becomes aware of them. The future is not fixed—it's open to our free choices to help determine it. What we decide can change the future.
God's Foreknowledge
God knows with certainty only what flows from a necessary order of causes. Since our free actions are not necessary but based on choices, God cannot know them for sure. So the future is not immutable. Omniscience is limited to what is possible for God to know, and it is not possible for God to know future free choices that free creatures will make. Since His knowledge about the future is not infallible, He can make predictions that do not come to pass; what He foretells can have only relative degrees of probability. Nonetheless, because of His great knowledge, God is highly accurate in His forecasting.
God's Predestination
God has not predetermined individuals to heaven or hell. Election is corporate, not individual; each individual must choose his own salva- tion. God has predestined the bus (Christ) for heaven—people can get on (salvation) or off (reprobation) by their own free choice. Predestination is based on God's foreknowledge of who will choose Him and who will not. Hence, His election is conditional—it is conditioned on our accepting or rejecting Him.
Man's Fallen State
Fallen human beings are spiritually dead in that they have no spiri- tual life. However, God's image is still present in them. As such, they are able to hear His voice and respond to His offer of salvation, and they must believe before they are regenerated. All people are capable of this belief that brings salvation.
God's Grace
God's saving love is for all people. Christ died for all humankind, and God is trying to save everyone. His grace, however, is not irresistible: Some accept and are saved, while some reject it and are lost (though some proponents of this view deny any eternal conscious punishment). We cannot work for our salvation, but we must work from it. Those who do not perform the proper good works can lose their salvation, for if salvation can be gained by a free choice, it likewise can be lost.
Man's Free Choice
Free will means the ability to do otherwise. Humans are truly free, having the power of contrary choice. God's choice of some to salvation is based on His foreknowledge that they would believe in Him. True freedom here on earth is the freedom to do good or evil. Only in heaven will there be freedom from evil; here we are free to reject God and His gift of heaven. Indeed, the free choice to accept salvation can later be used to reject and lose it. In short, this view places free will over sovereignty. God does not completely control the universe. His work on free creatures is persuasive but not coercive. In the final analysis, our destiny is determined by our own free choices. God's sovereignty is limited by the free creatures He has made.
THE BALANCED VIEW—Biblical or Biblicist
A third view attempts to balance sovereignty and free will, accepting both as basic biblical truths and seeking to reconcile them without making one or the other dominant to the exclusion of the other. The extreme Sovereignty view is held by extreme Calvinists. The extreme free will view is embraced by extreme Arminians (also called Open Theists). The balanced (or middle) view is maintained by moderate Calvinists and moderate Arminians. This is not to say there are no differences between moderate Calvinists and moderate Arminians. For example, moderate Calvinists believe in eternal security (once saved, always saved), and moderate Arminians do not. However, they hold many things in common, including their views on the following.
God's Control
According to the balanced (middle) view of sovereignty and free will, God is in “control” of the universe of free creatures by His foreknowledge. He does not force anyone's freedom, but He knows in advance from all eternity exactly what everyone is going to freely do and how much persuasion will be needed for them to do it. Further, God was free to create or not create, to create free creatures or not create them. Knowing exactly what would happen in every possible world, He freely chose to create this one to achieve the greatest good. His omniscient foreknowledge assures that it's going to come out exactly as He knew it would.
God's Foreknowledge
God knows with certainty what flows from a necessary order of causes. But He also knows for certain what free choices we will make.
So, in advance, He infallibly knows the entire future of the universe; it must come to pass as He knew it would, otherwise, He would have been wrong, and an omniscient mind cannot be wrong. Since God's knowledge about the future is infallible, His predictions must come to pass—they are not “probable forecasts.” The future (including free choices) is determined from the standpoint of God's foreknowledge but free from the vantage of our free will.
God's Predestination
God has predetermined some individuals to heaven. Election is not merely corporate; it is individual. Election of an individual is based on (or else according to) God's foreknowledge of their free choices. He never predestines anyone contrary to their free will but elects only those He foreknew would accept His saving grace. There are no conditions for God giving the gift of salvation, but there is one condition for getting it—one must receive it by faith.
Man's Fallen State
Fallen human beings are spiritually dead in that they have no spiritual life. However, God's image is still present in them; hence, they're able to hear His voice and respond to His offer of salvation. They must believe as a condition for being regenerated, and everyone is capable of exercising this belief that brings salvation. But no one ever believes who has not been persuaded by God's grace to do so.
God's Grace
God's saving love is for all people. Christ died for all humankind, and God is trying to save everyone. His grace, however, is not irresistible; it is persuasive but not coercive. Those who accept Christ are saved, and those who reject Him are lost. We cannot work for our salvation, but we must work from it. Man's Free choice in this life means “the ability to do otherwise.” Humans are truly free. True freedom here on earth is the freedom to accept or reject God's offer of salvation. In heaven we will be free from evil; here we are free to do evil.
-Chosen but Free by Dr. Norman Geisler
