Calvinist John Mac Arthur in his article, Why Every Calvinist Should be a PreMillennialist, writes: It is impossible to fully understand biblical teaching about the end times apart from understanding the future of Israel, the…
Posts By Ben Henshaw
Corporate Election Quotes
The following is a series of important excerpts from some of the best scholarly works espousing the corporate view of election. Taken together, these quoted sections give a very detailed description of the fundamental elements…
Jesus Says the Dead Will Hear Unto Spiritual Life
I want to recommend Chris Chapman’s article available at SEA called, The Extent of Spiritual Death. Chapman’s article does an excellent job of demonstrating from Scripture that the spiritual death described in the Bible does…
Does Jesus Teach Unconditional Eternal Security in John 6:37-65?
John 6:37, 44, 65 All that the Father gives Me will come to Me, and the one who comes to Me I will certainly not cast out…No one can come to Me unless the Father…
Does Paul Teach That the Gift of Salvation is Unconditionally Irrevocable in Romans 11:29?
Romans 6:23; 11:29 For the wages of sin is death but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord….For the gifts and the calling of God are irrevocable. Many see…
Does “Eternal Life” in Passages like John 3:16 Imply That Apostasy is Impossible?
John 3:16 For God so loved the world that He gave his one and only Son that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. Some emphasize the fact that eternal life…
Does Paul Teach Unconditional Eternal Security in Romans 8:35-39?
Romans 8:35-39 Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall trouble or hardship or persecution or famine or nakedness or danger or sword? As it is written: ‘For you sake we face death…
Does Jesus Teach Unconditional Eternal Security in John 10:27-29?
Having examined the primary passages that teach apostasy we now examine the passages that the advocates of unconditional eternal security believe clearly support their doctrine: John 10:27-29 My sheep listen to my voice; I know…
Does 1 John 2:18-19 Support the Calvinist “Never Saved to Begin With” View of Apostasy?
1 John 2:18-19
Little children, it is the last hour and as you have heard that the Anti-Christ is coming, even now many anti-christs have come, by which we know that it is the last hour. They went out from us, but they were not of us; for if they had been of us, they would have continued with us; but they went out that they might be manifest, that none of them were of us.
Debunking the False Faith View of the Hebrews Warning Passages
Below are some comments I made long ago in my perseverance series against the idea that the writer of Hebrews is addressing his warnings of falling away to those whose faith is not genuine, or…
Calvinist Prayer (and many other things) Explained
Application 2: God ordains means as well as ends. God is the Author. This is his story. We are his characters. Therefore, Be a faithful character in God’s story.* Taken from a sermon by Joe…
John Piper on God Ordaining All Sin and Evil Part 1: An Arminian Response to Piper’s First “Question”
John Piper preached a sermon on God’s sovereign control over all things. In this sermon, Piper highly praises the works of Jonathan Edwards and relies heavily on his accounting of sovereignty to explain how God…
1 Corinthians 15 and the Claims of Calvinism
Calvinism as a system claims that God reprobated a large segment of mankind so that they can never be saved. [1] It further claims that the atonement is for this reason limited only to the…
Provisional Atonement Part 1: Dealing With John Owen’s Arminian Dilemma
I lifted this from Jeff Paton’s website. He gives an answer based on his commitment to the “sacrificial” view of the atonement, which allows him to bypass the force of Owen’s argument. As I have…
Does Scripture Describe Two Types of Apostasy?
In my series on perseverance I dealt with the warning passages in Hebrews. I have changed my views on certain aspects of apostasy while studying the subject. However, my view that apostasy from true saving…
Does Erwin Lutzer Offer False Hope to Calvinist Parents?
I hope to do a few posts on Erwin Lutzer’s [1] book, The Doctrines That Divide: A Fresh Look at the Historic Doctrines That Separate Christians. One might expect that such a book would look…
Q&A on 2 Timothy 2:25, 26
Question: I am wondering if you can provide, or point me to, an Arminian exegesis of 2 Tim. 2.25-6? This scripture is often used by Calvinists as a counter to 1 Tim. 2.3, as well as to advance the idea that God has two wills, one of universal love to mankind, another more narrow in which He controls who will and won’t repent unto salvation (the latter underscored by 2 Tim. 2.25-26). I am looking for a good Arminian analysis here.
Answer: I don’t see anything in these verses that should lead one to the conclusion that the repentance spoken of here is irresistibly “given” or “granted”, nor that this is meant to convey the idea that God arbitrarily decides to cause some to repent while denying repentance to others (which would, as you point out, contradict Paul’s statement in 1 Tim. 2:4 that God desires all to be saved and come to the knowledge of the truth).
Resistible Grace or Sinless Perfection? A Call For Theological Precision in The Calvinist Accounting of Monergistic Conversion
A recent question in the ??Questions?? thread reminded me of an issue I raised long ago [1]. I thought it would be beneficial to raise this question again in more detail and maybe get some…
Paul Washer’s – “Doctrine” of Election: An Arminian Critique
I have been frequently referred to Paul Washer’s video discussion, “Doctrine” of Election. I found the video transcript and decided it would be beneficial to interact with this apparently influential accounting of Calvinist election. The…
Nelson’s Dictionary of Christianity Gets it Wrong: Examining the So Called “15 Major Tenets of Arminianism”
About a year ago I engaged in a conversation with someone who kept misrepresenting Arminian and Wesleyan teaching while insisting that his claims were “historical facts”. This person kept making reference to the “15 Major Tenets of Arminianism” to back up his claims. I had no idea what this could be a reference to since I was not familiar with any document written by Arminius or the Remonstrants that went by such a name. As it turns out, the so called “15 Major Tenets of Arminianism” is a sub-title given under the heading “Arminianism” in Nelson’s Dictionary of Christianity. Below is a critique proving that these 15 tenets are far from representative of Arminian theology.
The 15 Major Tenets of Arminianism are:
1. Human beings are free agents and human events are mediated by the foreknowledge of God.
