Understanding the Arminian god and the God of Scripture

In my opinion, there are two general reasons why many hold on to the Arminian god. The first reason is ignorance. Arminians are not fully aware of the attributes of the God of Scripture. They are also unaware of the essence of Calvinism which is why they see the doctrines of grace as abominable heresies. In the eyes of a man, God's presence is an overwhelmingly strange but beautiful sight. A mere glimpse of His holiness is enough to cause fear and surrender on the part of the beholder. The Arminians think otherwise. They view God as a powerful yet "incapable lord" with eternal wrinkles on His forehead in the hopes that men would look at His Son. They exemplify His omnipotence but deny His sovereignty above all. A variation of Arminianism accepts God's sovereignty but strictly believes that He totally respects man's will and does not choose to override it in any way even if He is capable to do so. If this is the case, not only has God become a servant but He has also been nothing but a slave to the free will of man. If His plans are based on the foreseen choices of man, hasn't He lost His throne and have been nothing more but a pet to man's choice? If He isn't sovereign, how can He accomplish what He sets out to do? How can He guarantee salvation? Another argument here is that if we are to believe in the Arminian god, then we are also to believe that there might be errors in Scripture since man, a fallible and degenerate being, was left alone to his will to write and preserve the scrolls from which the Bible came.

Nay, the God of Scripture is sovereign (Romans 9). He sits in a throne and He exercises mercy on His elect based on His own pleasure. Man has no vote and neither can he cause the mind of God to change. God is sovereign and everything that occurs in His universe, whether good or bad, has been permitted to happen to accomplish His high, grand and incomprehensible purpose. Even Satan cannot tempt man beyond what God allows (See book of Job). Do you think man could not be stopped if the Lord wanted to? Is our will that great that our Creator has no choice but helplessly watch? God is not watching the maze. He is actively participating in the maze.

Where in Scripture was the sovereignty of God limited? Every text of the Bible portrays the sovereignty of the Lord over all creation. But the Arminian mind has been blinded so that it cannot comprehend such truths. I too used to be an Arminian so I know what it means to be ignorant and blind. If the Spirit has not touched my eyes, I wouldn't see or comprehend the way God accomplishes His task. I am convinced that every true believer starts out as an Arminian. Most remain and die as such. Yet some, as they get older and grow in Christ, begin to understand their total depravity and inability to break free from sin. They later acknowledge God's sovereignty and embrace reformed theology.

The second reason is that Arminians are also afraid that they might falsify God. In my opinion, Reformed theology, at first glance, appears to be a series of miscommunicated truths. I even believed that those who uphold Calvinism are Bible-obsessed heretics. I did not understand nor see the extent of the Lord's power during that time. A well versed Arminian is afraid of the five points of Reformed theology. Since I used to be an Arminian, allow me to elaborate the Arminian's fear and the Calvinistic stand.

On the fifth point, the doctrine of the perseverance of saints:

I was afraid that if I were to accept that salvation could not be taken away, I would disregard the cross and be carnal. I was frightened that accepting such belief would drive me to throw away the commandments since I would "inevitable persevere" in the end anyways. What a small mind do I have? I did not understand that a true believer is a regenerate working craft of the Spirit. And the reason why regenerate men are destined to persevere in the end is because a God of infinite worth and power is behind their strings. If a person whom God justifies and regenerates fail, the reputation of the Lord would be lost and His ability to carry man till the end would be a fallacy. Those who apparently fall away never had true faith to begin with.

The doctrine of the perseverance of saints is slightly different from the "once saved, always saved" view which is advocated by some evangelicals in which, despite apostasy, unrepentant and habitual sin, the individual is truly saved if they accepted Christ at any point in the past. This is not what the Bible teaches. It is true that a true born again Christian that is saved by God's grace can still sin. He can even temporarily go back to his sinful habits. However, he cannot stay in sin or live in continuous carnality. Whenever a true believer steps out of the path, the Spirit residing in his body convicts him to the point that he experiences godly sorrow, breaks down over his sin and then comes back to Christ in repentance and awe.

On the first point, the doctrine of man's total depravity:

Being raised in Arminian theology, I was also afraid of man's total depravity. I could not accept that man has no free will to choose God until God made me experience the depths of depravity. He left me on my own will and I was totally powerless against sin. All I had were temporal triumphs but in truth, I was a slave to my nature. Our nature dictates our will. In the same way a dog can bark and not purr, man can only sin and not choose God without any divine intervention. We are still "free" but only within the boundaries of our sinful natures. Unless God holds your heart captive by His truth, you cannot be free from sin. You will sin and sin and sin and sin and sin. You can try to stop but in the following weeks your thoughts would betray you and you would fall again. You cannot break free from the cycle nor save yourself. The Bible is clear: we had all become helpless slaves of inequity and even our good works are filthy rags before the Lord (Isaiah 54:6).

I praise God that He hath revealed to me His wonderful and saving truth on Calvary. He opened my eyes so I could have made a choice. He was the prime mover. It wasn't synergism. It was monergism. Embracing the reality of man's inability and depravity made the rest of the doctrines of grace easier to accept.

On the second point, the doctrine of unconditional election:

Again, viewing this doctrine made shout "heresy" in my mind. This made me think that if God unconditionally elects people and saves a particular number, He would not be fair. I could not understand what the Lord meant when He said "Jacob have I loved, Esau have I hated" when they haven't done anything yet. And even after they were born, God loved Jacob when he was the greater sinner of the twins? Then I finally understood. It was because God chooses men based on His own pleasure. He did this to demonstrate that His choice is not based on man's merit.

Another point that I'd like to emphasize is that the real unfair part is not that He hated Esau.
You see all of us have sinned and we have continuously offended God with our thoughts and deeds. Deny it as you want but the Bible says we deserve condemnation under the holy wrath of God (Romans 1). But He did not leave us condemned even though it was rightfully so. Out of His sheer mercies came a Savior who satisfied His justice and successfully redeemed His elect with His suffering and death. So the "real" unfair part is that He hath elected a people for Himself at all! He could have left us all to our depraved minds and let our deeds condemn us on judgment day. Yet He did not! He redeemed for Himself a people who did not love Him initially for His own Son so that Jesus would have the pre-eminence above all creation. So God in unconditionally electing a certain number of people is not unfair because He predestines. He is "unfair" because He even cared at all. But take note, God was not unfair because His Son drank the cup of His judgment. Thus, there is no more condemnation left for His elect.

On the third point, the doctrine of limited atonement:

The term "limited atonement" raises a lot of eye brows in the evangelical world so I prefer to call it the doctrine of particular redemption. This was not hard to accept for me because I understood the finished work of Christ on the cross. The substitution of Christ and the nature of the atonement should also be fully examined before one could fully grasp this doctrine.

The doctrine of limited atonement is the teaching that Jesus' substitutionary atonement as definite and certain in its design and accomplishment. The doctrine is driven by the concept of the sovereignty of God in salvation and the Pauline understanding of the nature of the atonement. Christians view the atonement as a penal substitution (that is, Jesus was punished in the place of sinners), and since, it would be unjust for God to pay the penalty for some people's sins and then still condemn them for those sins, all those whose sins were atoned for must necessarily be saved.

Moreover, since in this scheme God knows precisely who the elect are and since only the elect will be saved, there is no requirement that Christ atone for sins in general, only for those of the elect. However, I do not believe that the atonement is limited in its value or power (in other words, God could have elected everyone and used it to atone for them all), but rather that the atonement is limited in the sense that it is designed for some and not all.

On the fourth point, the doctrine of irresistible grace:

The term "irresistible" seems synonymous to "forceful", thus, even among the evangelicals, it is easily dismissed or misunderstood. I prefer to call it the doctrine of "sovereign grace" or "efficacious grace" to emphasize superiority and effectiveness of God's grace to sustain and restrain man from beginning to end. I also didn't have problem with this once I have been convinced by Scripture that God is truly sovereign over all.

The doctrine does not hold that every influence of God's Holy Spirit cannot be resisted but that the Holy Spirit is able to overcome all resistance and make his influence irresistible and effective. Thus, when God sovereignly purposes to save someone, that individual certainly will be saved.

In conclusion, all people are entirely at the mercy of God, who would be just in condemning all people for their sins but who has chosen to be merciful to some. One person is saved while another is condemned, not because of a foreseen willingness, faith, or any other virtue in the first person, but because God sovereignly chose to have mercy on them. Although the person must believe the gospel and respond to be saved, this obedience of faith is God's gift, and thus God completely and sovereignly accomplishes the salvation of sinners.

In practice, we, Christians, teach sovereign grace primarily for the encouragement of the church because they believe the doctrine demonstrate the extent of God's love in saving those who could not and would not follow him, as well as squelching pride and self-reliance and emphasizing the Christian's total dependence on the grace of God. In the same way, sanctification (a.k.a. regeneration) in the Biblical view requires a continual reliance on God to purge the Christian's depraved heart from the power of sin and to further the Christian's joy.

Note: Some statements are indirectly/directly quoted from the works of John Calvin and other reformed preachers