Give No Quarter

I just finished reading J. I. Packer's introduction to John Owen's classic the Death of Death in the Death of Christ, published by The Banner of Truth Trust, and I submit that it alone is worth the price of the book. In his essay, Packer gives no quarter to the Arminian, Universalist, or the self-righteous. Responding to the claim that Arminianism is a "result of reading the Scriptures in a 'natural,' unbiased, unsophisticated way," Packer writes: "Certainly, Arminianism is 'natural' in one sense, in that it represents a characteristic perversion of biblical teaching by the fallen mind of man, who even in salvation cannot bear to renounce the delusion of being master of his fate and captain of his soul."

Here is another interesting quote from Packer:

"Our minds have been conditioned to think of the Cross as a redemption which does less than redeem, and of Christ as a Saviour who does less than save, and of God's love as a weak affection which cannot keep anyone from hell without help, and of faith as the human help which God needs for this purpose. As a result, we are no longer free either to believe the biblical gospel or to preach it. We cannot believe it because our thoughts are caught in the toils of synergism[Cf Monergism]. We are haunted by the Arminian idea that if faith and unbelief are to be responsible acts, they must be independent acts; hence we are not free to believe that we are saved entirely by divine grace through a faith which is itself God's gift and flows to us from Calvary. Instead, we involve ourselves in a bewildering kind of double-think about salvation, telling ourselves one moment that it all depends on God and the next moment that it all depends on us. This is a hollow anticlimax. . .We have not exalted grace and the Cross; we have cheapened them. We have limited the atonement far more drastically than Calvinism does, for whereas Calvinism asserts that Christ's death, as such, saves all whom it was meant to save, we have denied that Christ's death, as such, is sufficient to save any of them. . .It can hardly be wondered at that the converts of the new gospel are so often both irreverent and irreligious, for such is the natural tendency of this teaching."

Note: I have noticed that often the first thing that a new Calvinist will do, after he gets off his knees in thanksgiving to God, is go to his Arminian neighbor and pound him over the head with his new found theology. This will not do. I have found that most Arminians do not even know they are Arminians, where as I have not yet met a Calvinist that did not know he was one. It has also been my experience that most Arminians genuinely believe they are defending the character of God rather than the sovereignty of man. Accordingly, I would urge gentle patience, praying that the Holy Spirit will reveal to them ,this truth, in time.