2. The Arminian Theory, or Theory of voluntarily appropriated Depravity.
Arminius (1560-1609), professor in the University of Leyden, in South Holland, while formally accepting the doctrine of the Adamic unity of the race propounded both by Luther and Calvin, gave a very different interpretation to it—an interpretation which verged toward Semi-Pelagianism and the anthropology of the Greek Church. The Methodist body is the modern representative of this view.
According to this theory, all men, as a divinely appointed sequence of Adam's transgression, are naturally destitute of original righteousness, and are exposed to misery and death. By virtue of the infirmity propagated from Adam to all his descendants, mankind are wholly unable without divine help perfectly to obey God or to attain eternal life. This inability, however, is physical and intellectual, but not voluntary. As matter of justice, therefore, God bestows upon each individual from the first dawn of consciousness a special influence of the Holy Spirit, which is sufficient to counteract the effect of the inherited depravity and to make obedience possible, provided the human will coöperates, which it still has power to do.
The evil tendency and state may be called sin; but they do not in themselves involve guilt or punishment; still less are mankind accounted guilty of Adam's sin. God imputes to each man his inborn tendencies to evil, only when he consciously and voluntarily appropriates and ratifies these in spite of the power to the contrary, which, in justice to man, God has specially communicated. In Rom. 5:12, “death passed unto all men, for that all sinned,” signifies that physical and spiritual death is inflicted upon all men, not as the penalty of a common sin in Adam, but because, by [pg 602] divine decree, all suffer the consequences of that sin, and because all personally consent to their inborn sinfulness by acts of transgression.
See Arminius, Works, 1:252-254, 317-324, 325-327, 523-531, 575-583. The description given above is a description of Arminianism proper. The expressions of Arminius himself are so guarded that Moses Stuart (Bib. Repos., 1831) found it possible to construct an argument to prove that Arminius was not an Arminian. But it is plain that by inherited sin Arminius meant only inherited evil, and that it was not of a sort to justify God's condemnation. He denied any inbeing in Adam, such as made us justly chargeable with Adam's sin, except in the sense that we are obliged to endure certain consequences of it. This Shedd has shown in his History of Doctrine, 2:178-196. The system of Arminius was more fully expounded by Limborch and Episcopius. See Limborch, Theol. Christ., 3:4:6 (p. 189). The sin with which we are born “does not inhere in the soul, for this [soul] is immediately created by God, and therefore, if it were infected with sin, that sin would be from God.” Many so-called Arminians, such as Whitby and John Taylor, were rather Pelagians.
John Wesley, however, greatly modified and improved the Arminian doctrine. Hodge, Syst. Theol., 2:329, 330—“Wesleyanism (1) admits entire moral depravity; (2) denies that men in this state have any power to coöperate with the grace of God; (3) asserts that the guilt of all through Adam was removed by the justification of all through Christ; (4) ability to coöperate is of the Holy Spirit, through the universal influence of the redemption of Christ. The order of the decrees is (1) to permit the fall of man; (2) to send the Son to be a full satisfaction for the sins of the whole world; (3) on that ground to remit all original sin, and to give such grace as would enable all to attain eternal life; (4) those who improve that grace and persevere to the end are ordained to be saved.”We may add that Wesley made the bestowal upon our depraved nature of ability to coöperate with God to be a matter of grace, while Arminius regarded it as a matter of justice, man without it not being accountable.
Wesleyanism was systematized by Watson, who, in his Institutes, 2:53-55, 59, 77, although denying the imputation of Adam's sin in any proper sense, yet declares that “Limborch and others materially departed from the tenets of Arminius in denying inward lusts and tendencies to be sinful till complied with and augmented by the will. But men universally choose to ratify these tendencies; therefore they are corrupt in heart. If there be a universal depravity of will previous to the actual choice, then it inevitably follows that though infants do not commit actual sin, yet that theirs is a sinful nature....As to infants, they are not indeed born justified and regenerate; so that to say original sin is taken away, as to infants, by Christ, is not the correct view of the case, for the reasons before given; but they are all born under ‘the free gift,’ the effects of the ‘righteousness’ of one, which is extended to all men; and this free gift is bestowed on them in order to justification of life, the adjudging of the condemned to live....Justification in adults is connected with repentance and faith; in infants, we do not know how. The Holy Spirit may be given to children. Divine and effectual influence may be exerted on them, to cure the spiritual death and corrupt tendency of their nature.”
It will be observed that Watson's Wesleyanism is much more near to Scripture than what we have described, and properly described, as Arminianism proper. Pope, in his Theology, follows Wesley and Watson, and (2:70-86) gives a valuable synopsis of the differences between Arminius and Wesley. Whedon and Raymond, in America, better represent original Arminianism. They hold that God was under obligation to restore man's ability, and yet they inconsistently speak of this ability as a gracious ability. Two passages from Raymond's Theology show the inconsistency of calling that “grace,”which God is bound in justice to bestow, in order to make man responsible: 2:84-86—“The race came into existence under grace. Existence and justification are secured for it only through Christ; for, apart from Christ, punishment and destruction would have followed the first sin. So all gifts of the Spirit necessary to qualify him for the putting forth of free moral choices are secured for him through Christ. The Spirit of God is not a bystander, but a quickening power. So man is by grace, not by his fallen nature, a moral being capable of knowing, loving, obeying, and enjoying God. Such he ever will be, if he does not frustrate the grace of God. Not till the Spirit takes his final flight is he in a condition of total depravity.”
Compare with this the following passage of the same work in which this “grace” is called a debt: 2:317—“The relations of the posterity of Adam to God are substantially those of newly created beings. Each individual person is obligated to God, and [pg 603]God to him, precisely the same as if God had created him such as he is. Ability must equal obligation. God was not obligated to provide a Redeemer for the first transgressors, but having provided Redemption for them, and through it having permitted them to propagate a degenerate race, an adequate compensation is due. The gracious influences of the Spirit are then a debt due to man—a compensation for the disabilities of inherited depravity.” McClintock and Strong (Cyclopædia, art.: Arminius) endorse Whedon's art. in the Bib. Sac., 19:241, as an exhibition of Arminianism, and Whedon himself claims it to be such. See Hagenbach, Hist. Doct., 2:214-216.
With regard to the Arminian theory we remark: