The more I read about Arminianism, the more I am convinced that I am not an Arminian. However, I am cautious to judge, since I realize that many of the viewpoints I find most objectionable may not be “orthodox” Arminianism. I just ordered a copy of Roger Olson’s “Arminian Theology: Myths and Realities”, apparently the definitive text on what Arminians actually believe.
I did find a defense of Arminianism posted by the book’s author, and find his arguments to be quite concerning. Speaking about the bridge collapse in Minneapolis a couple of years ago, he argues that God could never allow humans to suffer, and says:
The God of Calvinism scares me; I’m not sure how to distinguish him from the devil. If you’ve come under the influence of Calvinism, think about its ramifications for the character of God. God is great but also good. In light of all the evil and innocent suffering in the world, he must have limited himself.
This line is very revealing. He says, “The God of Calvinism scares me”, as if fear is a bad thing – as if “fear of the Lord” is an old-testament concept that doesn’t apply today. His fatal flaw (and seemingly, the fatal flaw of many modern Arminians) is that he sees fear and love in purely human terms, and thus sees fear as being the polar opposite of love.
The scriptures say, “fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom”, and also say, “perfect love casts out fear”. What does this mean? The popular Death Cab For Cutie song, “I Will Follow You Into the Dark” asks this exact question:
In Catholic school as vicious as Roman rule
I got my knuckles bruised by a lady in black
And I held my tongue as she told me
"Son fear is the heart of love"
So I never went back
While the statement may well have been apocryphal, it is quite profound. It highlights the seeming contradiction between the two verses of scripture I quoted above. Furthermore, it shows the natural scriptural ordering of these two (first fear, then love), and exemplifies the typical human reaction (revulsion). What shall we make of this?
A closely related verse which may be challenging to Arminians like Roger Olson is Psalm 116:15; “Precious in the sight of the LORD is the death of his saints.”
Is our God a bloodthirsty God? This is the question that an atheist blogger asks. He correctly realizes that our conception of God so far leads to the conclusion that the saints delight in seeing the suffering of the damned. Again, the reaction to this seeming contradiction is the most revealing of all. A commenter on the atheist blog remarks:
In high school, I had a brief fling with Evangelical Christianity, mostly through the influence of a girlfriend. One of the things she said to me, in a particularly painful conversation, was that it filled with her with horror to imagine being in Heaven and looking down to see me among the Damned. It’s perhaps not surprising that sometime later — after we had broken up — she started rebelling major time against her church’s teachings, and ended up in very liberal Christian waters. Me, I just ended up by not being Christian at all
This reaction is completely human, and something we can all understand. The girlfriend could not imagine herself among the saints, rejoicing in (or at least impervious to) the suffering of her boyfriend. And the boyfriend felt at least a little bit of pride and validation at being able to compete with lord Jesus for the girlfriend’s loyalties (enough to brag about it on a message board).
This is exactly the reaction of modern Arminians. They say, “God isn’t Love if He doesn’t let Billy into heaven!”. They want to define love in their own terms – they want to have veto power on love. They want to be able to say, “if not all of my friends, then none of us!”. But love defined purely in human terms becomes merely human, and dissipates into darkness. What could be more appropriate a title for this song than “I Will Follow You Into the Dark”?
But human-centered love has become so tainted that it bears little resemblance to the Love of God. Perhaps in the love of father and son there is still the resemblance, and even at times in marriage. But only very rarely in romantic love. Only in an omnipotent God can Love originate and be perfected. Only Love which is perfect, only in God, can fear be dispelled. We say that “God is Love” specifically to make it clear the “love is NOT God”. The phrase “God is Love” was coined during the time when the great whore Babylon worshipped love as a goddess named Ishtar. We should be very careful not to let modern Arminianism become modern Ishtar-worship.
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