Recent Posts

Conditional Perseverance

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Many who call themselves “Arminian” also hold to the doctrine of Eternal Security, even though this has not historically been the case. This fact has recently granted that Arminianism no longer stands or falls with…

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This Ain’t Your Grandpa’s Arminianism

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What I have witnessed from recent Arminius and Arminian scholarship, at least among those who are self-identified as being Arminian, differs, I think, from what was known as Arminian fifty to hundred years ago, with very few exceptions.1

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Do We Need an Arminian Defense League?

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by Roger Olson Okay, so I used that title to get your attention. No, I don’t really think we need an Arminian Defense League (although sometimes I feel like the only person doing anything to…

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James Arminius on the Stage of Time

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“There lived in Holland a man, whom they that did not know him could not sufficiently esteem; whom they who did not esteem him had never sufficiently known,”1 said Peter Bertius (1565-1629), friend to Arminius in his youth, at the funeral of James Arminius, October 1609. When most people think of James Arminius, they tend to think of free will or the notion that one can lose his or her salvation. That is unfortunate, since Arminius did not champion the cause of free will, nor was he the poster-child for the doctrine of Apostasy.

John Calvin’s successor and son-in-law, Theodore Beza (1519-1605), in a letter written to the Rev. Martin Lydius in 1583, a professor who belonged to the Church of Amsterdam (where Arminius would later become pastor for fifteen years), writes:

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Arminius’s Analysis of Romans 9

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Dutch Reformed pastor and theologian James Arminius wrote a letter to an ex-priest named Gellius Snecanus regarding the latter’s publication of several commentaries on the subject of Unconditional Election and Reprobation from Romans 9. Arminius’s…

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Non-Calvinists

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For those who frequent my site (both of you), I am sure that you noticed that I disagree with Calvinism. Indeed I have a lot of negative things to say about Calvinism, mostly because I…

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Faith Is Not a Work

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“Now to the one who works,” writes the apostle Paul, “wages are not credited as a gift but as an obligation. However, to the one who does not work but trusts God who justifies the…

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Boasting

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For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast. (Ephesians 2:8-9)Many…

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The Confession and Catechism Support Arminianism

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What should occur if the Belgic Confession and the Heidelberg Catechism supports not supralapsarian Calvinism but Arminius’s theology? Both works have always been viewed as Calvinistic, with the assumption that the inherent predestinatory language opposes Reformed Arminianism. In truth, even the more explicit statements regarding election unto salvation in the Confession and Catechism supports Arminius’s doctrine of election. A national synod was not called prior to Arminius’s death in 1609, so we will never know what might have been.

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