Display of Arminianism Chapter X
By John Owen
(Modern
English)
The second major part of this controversy concerns grace, faith, holiness, and sincere obedience to the commands of the new covenant.
We give all the glory for these things to God alone for two reasons:
Because Christ purchased them for us by His death.
Because the Holy Spirit produces them in us by His power.
Christ's death is the meritorious cause of these blessings, and the Holy Spirit is the effective cause who works them within us through the Word and the ordinances of God.
But because this doctrine strips the Arminian idol of its greatest honor and exposes its weakness, the Arminians rise in its defense. In doing so, they attempt to exclude both the merit of Christ and the work of the Spirit from having any decisive role in producing faith, repentance, and holiness.
We affirm that God "has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in Christ" (Ephesians 1:3), and surely faith is among the greatest of those blessings.
Scripture teaches that Christ has become for us:
righteousness,
sanctification,
redemption,
and that He was made sin for us so that we might become the righteousness of God in Him.
He is called "The Lord Our Righteousness," and whatever Christ becomes to us, He becomes chiefly through the merit of His work.
Likewise, Paul declares:
"To you it has been given, for Christ's sake, not only to believe in Him but also to suffer for His sake" (Philippians 1:29).
The apostle plainly teaches that faith itself is granted because of Christ. Christ is therefore the meritorious cause of the gift of faith, just as He is the cause of perseverance in suffering.
Yet when we confess that faith, repentance, and all spiritual blessings are purchased by Christ's blood, the Arminians immediately object and seek to remove His death from having any such role.
They boldly say:
"Nothing is more foolish or vain than to attribute faith and regeneration to the merit of Christ. If Christ merited faith and regeneration for us, then faith could not be a condition God requires from sinners under threat of eternal punishment."
Again they say:
"If faith is the effect of Christ's merit, then it cannot be our duty."
But consider the implications.
When the church prays that God would gather His lost sheep, grant faith and repentance to unbelievers, and bring sinners to Christ for His Son's sake—is that a foolish prayer?
Must Christians stop praying:
"Lord, grant faith to the unbelieving,"
"Lord, bring the lost to Yourself,"
"Lord, increase our faith"?
If the Arminians are right, such prayers are meaningless.
Yet every sincere believer knows otherwise.
It is painful to see Christ's honor diminished in this way. With a single stroke of the pen, the chief fruits of His suffering are taken from Him.
If denying that Christ purchased faith is truly the way to magnify His blood, then most Christians throughout history have greatly misunderstood the gospel.
Until someone convinces us otherwise, we will continue believing with the apostle that God blesses us with every spiritual blessing in Christ—and we will continue counting faith among those blessings.
Regeneration is nothing less than the cleansing of our consciences from dead works so that we may serve the living God.
The apostle explicitly says that this cleansing comes through the blood of Christ (Hebrews 9:14).
Likewise Peter teaches that we are redeemed from our empty way of life by Christ's precious blood (1 Peter 1:18–19).
Therefore we attribute our new birth and spiritual renewal to the grace purchased by His sacrifice.
By the power of His blood we are delivered from the state of sin and corruption into which we were born.
The Arminians have essentially one argument against this doctrine.
They say:
Faith and repentance cannot be purchased by Christ because they are duties God commands us to perform.
In other words:
Whatever God commands us to do cannot also be something Christ obtained for us.
But this argument fails in two important ways.
If this reasoning is valid, then none of God's gifts could be gifts at all.
Everything God commands is pleasing to Him.
Faith is commanded.
Repentance is commanded.
Love is commanded.
Holiness is commanded.
Perseverance is commanded.
Indeed, from conversion to glorification there is not a single grace that Scripture does not require of us.
Therefore, according to this argument, none of these graces can be gifts from God.
The entire Christian life would become a purely human achievement.
The argument proves far more than the Arminians want it to prove.
The apostle urges sinners:
"Be reconciled to God."
Is reconciliation with God our duty?
If not, the apostolic command is pointless.
If it is our duty, then according to the Arminian principle Christ could not have obtained reconciliation for us.
Yet even Arminians admit that Christ purchased reconciliation.
Thus their own argument destroys their own position.
The truth is simple:
Christ's merit obtaining grace for us and God's giving grace to us do not prevent that grace from also becoming our duty once received.
Faith is both:
God's gift,
and our duty.
Repentance is both:
God's gift,
and our duty.
The two are not contradictory.
Therefore Christians may continue praying in Christ's name for faith, repentance, and every spiritual blessing.
When we cry,
"Lord, help my unbelief,"
or
"Lord, increase our faith,"
we are asking God to give what He commands.
The second great issue concerns the Holy Spirit's role in producing grace.
Scripture repeatedly teaches that God works faith, repentance, and obedience in us by the powerful operation of His Spirit.
The Arminians oppose this by claiming:
If God works these things in us, they cannot truly be our acts of obedience.
The entire controversy therefore comes down to this question:
Can God work in us what He commands from us?
The Arminians answer no.
They declare:
"What is commanded should not be produced in us, and what is produced in us should not be commanded."
Again:
"He acts foolishly who commands another to do something that he himself intends to work in that person."
According to them, God's commands and God's effective grace are mutually exclusive.
If this principle is true, then some of the greatest theologians in church history were fools.
Augustine prayed:
"Give what You command, and command what You will."
According to the Arminians, such a prayer makes no sense.
Pope Benedict prayed:
"Lord, teach us what we ought to do; show us where we should go; work in us what You require us to perform."
The Council of Orange declared:
"Many good things are done in man which man himself does not produce; but no man does any good unless God causes him to do it."
Again:
"Whenever we do good, God works in us and with us so that we may do it."
All these statements become absurd if the Arminian principle is true.
But the problem runs even deeper.
Scripture itself would be implicated.
God commands His people to fear Him.
Yet He also promises:
"I will put My fear in their hearts, that they shall not depart from Me."
Are His commands foolish?
Or are His promises false?
The Arminians must choose one or abandon their position.
They continue:
"How can someone seriously prescribe a condition with rewards and punishments attached, while intending to produce that condition in the person himself?"
In other words:
Christ says,
"He who believes shall be saved; he who does not believe shall be condemned."
Faith is therefore the condition of salvation.
The Arminians argue that if God Himself creates faith in people, then the entire arrangement becomes theatrical and absurd.
But what does this imply?
Since the Fall, mankind cannot obey God apart from grace.
Therefore, according to the Arminian principle, every act whereby God commands sinners while also providing the grace needed to obey would be ridiculous.
The whole gospel would become a mockery.
The Arminians insist:
"Faith and conversion cannot be acts of obedience if God works them in us."
And Episcopius adds:
"It is absurd to say that God causes the elect to do what He requires from them."
Thus whenever Scripture calls faith the gift of God, they explain it away.
They insist faith is fundamentally our own work because God commands it.
Even Augustine's famous statement—
"God crowns His own gifts in us"
—is dismissed by them as requiring heavy qualification.
Their ultimate goal is clear.
They want every grace attributed primarily to human free will.
Whatever good believers possess is reduced to the fulfillment of duty.
Nothing remains as a special gift of grace.
As a result, Christ's saving work is diminished, and believers become, in a broad sense, their own saviors.
The Scriptures completely overturn this error.
A few examples will suffice.
God commands Israel:
"Circumcise the foreskin of your heart" (Deuteronomy 10:16).
This is clearly their duty.
Yet later God promises:
"The Lord your God will circumcise your heart" (Deuteronomy 30:6).
The same thing is both:
man's duty,
God's work.
The Arminian principle cannot account for this.
God commands:
"Make yourselves a new heart and a new spirit" (Ezekiel 18:31).
This command comes with promises and warnings.
Yet later God says:
"I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit within you" (Ezekiel 36:26–27).
Again, what God requires He also gives.
God frequently commands His people to fear Him.
Yet He also promises:
"I will put My fear in their hearts, that they shall not depart from Me" (Jeremiah 32:40).
The command and the gift stand together.
Scripture explicitly attributes both faith and repentance to God's gift.
Repentance:
"God has granted repentance unto life."
Faith:
"It is the gift of God."
I will believe the Holy Spirit rather than those who deny that faith is God's gift simply because it is exercised by us.
Isaiah likewise says:
"You have wrought all our works in us."
Paul says:
"I labored, yet not I, but the grace of God with me."
Again:
"It is God who works in you both to will and to do according to His good pleasure."
God's working does not destroy our activity.
Rather, it enables it.
Our works remain ours, even though God is the one who produces them.
Paul asks:
"Who makes you differ from another? And what do you have that you did not receive?" (1 Corinthians 4:7).
Everything that distinguishes one believer from another is received from God.
Faith and repentance are the foundation of spiritual distinction.
Therefore they too must be received from God.
The entire promise of the new covenant rests upon this truth:
"I will put My fear in their hearts, that they shall not depart from Me."
God Himself ensures what He commands.
Owen observes that the underlying principle behind this error is not biblical but philosophical.
It closely resembles Cicero's statement:
"No one ever thanked God for virtue. We are praised for virtue and glory in it. That could not be so if virtue were God's gift."
In softer language, Owen argues, this is essentially the Arminian position:
If grace is truly God's gift, then man loses the ground of boasting.
Finally, Owen notes that this error was the very heart of the ancient Pelagian controversy.
The church fathers vigorously opposed it.
Augustine wrote:
"Certainly we act when we act, but God causes us to act."
Again:
"Shall we deny that something is God's gift merely because it is required from us? God forbid."
Pope Celestine wrote:
"Such is God's goodness that He wills His gifts to become our merits."
Prosper declared:
"It is a foolish complaint of proud men that free will is destroyed when the beginning, progress, and perseverance in good are said to be God's gifts."
The central error of Arminianism is the claim that if God commands faith, repentance, holiness, and obedience, then He cannot also be the One who gives and works those things in us.
Scripture teaches exactly the opposite.
God commands what is right.
God gives what He commands.
Christ purchased every spiritual blessing for His people.
The Holy Spirit powerfully applies those blessings to their hearts.
Therefore faith, repentance, obedience, perseverance, and every grace are simultaneously:
duties we perform,
gifts Christ purchased,
and works God Himself produces within us.
For that reason all glory belongs to God alone—from the first movement of faith to the final perfection of holiness.