By Angus Harley

Allow me, brothers and sisters, to have a little fun at the expense of those misguided brothers who are Arminian.  I’m going to use their own system to point out major flaws in it, and that, if they were consistent, they would become far closer to the Calvinistic model.

What happened to God’s plan?

You Arminians clobber Calvinism for believing that God foreordained whatever comes to pass. God cannot, and did not, do this, say Arminians, for this would mean that God was the author of evil, and that he utterly cast out man’s free will to choose God, and, in its turn, obviate God’s grace that elects those that God saw would believe in him.

What I cannot, for the life of me, find in any Arminian discussion is just how God decided on acting in this Arminian manner. I mean, God must have had a plan to do all the things the Arminians said are true. He didn’t suddenly jump up and declare, ‘Let’s elect those who will believe in Jesus!’ This plan, if true, is the basis for God’s actions. Let us state this in Arminian lingo:

God’s plan is the necessary foundation for God’s action of electing believers

In other words, before God made any elective act of believers (as Arminians think), he had already planned to act in that manner, to use his so-called foreknowledge in the Arminian way. Nothing happens, not a thing, unless God decides and plans to act in a certain manner, with certain goals. God controls it all from the get-go.

What do we call such an action?

Now, what would be the proper ‘theological’ name for having such a plan set in stone to later enact it?  Could it possibly be ‘ordained’? Thus, God preplanned and ordained that he would enact this exact (Arminian) plan. And if not ‘ordained’, what? Which word or concept? It has to satisfy the demand that God preplanned election and then determined in himself to bring it to pass. God’s pre-determination, perhaps? I don’t know; Arminian, you choose.

What do we do with God’s choice to bypass various futures?

God looked into the future, we are told, and saw that many would believe in Jesus; these he elected. But why did not God choose a different future? Why that one? Why not a future that had no evil? So, we are seeing that God deliberately chose one path and not the other: he rejected the path (future) of all mankind as godly; he chose a future where mankind was evil and only some believed in Jesus. This was his action and choice entirely; free will had no bearing on God’s choice of a future, for all the (Arminian) futures that God saw included man’s free will.

Eh…oops!

Now, as God chose a certain future, and not all the others, then it was he who alone made it certain that that particular future was the appropriate one, and was going to come to pass. The only problem is that, this particular future has great evil in it, even the death of the Son of God!!! Why did God choose such a horrible, evil, future? And why, more to the point, did he fix it to inexorably take place? To those Arminians still not getting the point: why did God alone, by himself, set in stone a future that brought forth evil?

All things, mind you!

Now, in looking into the future (which is our life and world), God saw all things that came to pass in that particular life/future. Everything! So that, there is not a single, solitary thing that happens in our world- nada, nothing, zero- that was not, 1) first seen by God as a future; 2) and then set in stone to happen in our present because God chose that future, and he chose also that it would take place EXACTLY as he saw it.

Here’s the thing, this means that God preplanned and ‘ordained’ (set in stone?): 1) the Arminian model of election that had free will at its heart; 2) the entire life of the universe and man from first moment to last, all of which included man’s free will; and, 3) every single evil act that ever occurred, even Jesus’ death. Oh, snap! That sounds far too much like C A L V  I N I S M…ehhh!