The Arminian - Reformed Controversy

                       From In My Place He Stood:  Celebrating the Glory
                       of Atonement, by J.I. Packer


          "Grace proves irresistible just because it destroys the disposition to resist.
     Where the Arminian, therefore, will be content to say, 'I decided for Christ,'
      'I made up my mind to be a Christian,' the Calvinist (Reformed) will wish to
     speak of his conversion in more theological fashion, to make plain whose work
     it really was:

                                     'Long my imprisoned spirit lay
                                     Fast bound in sin and nature's night:

                                     Thine eye diffused a quickening ray;
                                     I woke; the dungeon flamed with light;

                                     My chains fell off:  my heart was free:
                                     I rose, went forth, and followed thee.'
                                                                      Charles Wesley

                       Footnote by Packer:

                                    'Granted it was Charles Wesley who wrote this,
                                     but it is one of the many passages in his hymns
                                     which make one ask ... 'Where's your Armininanism
                                     now, friend?'



            Clearly, these two notions of internal grace are sharply opposed to each other.


                                                            ***********

            Now, the Calvinist contends that the Arminian idea of election, redemption,
     and calling as acts of God which do not save cuts at the very heart of their biblical
     meaning; that to say in the Arminian sense that God elects believers, and Christ died for
     all men, and the Spirit quickens those who receive the Word, is really to say that in
     the biblical sense God elects nobody, and Christ died for nobody, and the Spirit
     quickens nobody.

           The matter at issue in this controversy, therefore, is the meaning to be given to
     those terms, and to some others that are soteriologically significant, such as the love
     of God, the covenant of grace, and the verb save itself, with its synonyms.

            Arminians gloss them all in terms of the principle that salvation does not
     directly depend on any decree or act of God, but on man's independent activity in
     believing.

            Calvinists maintain that this principle is itself is unscriptural and irreligious,
     that such glossing demonstrably perverts the sense of Scripture and undermines
     the gospel at every point it is practiced.

            This, and nothing less than this, is what the Arminian controversy is about."


                                                  ****************

            Calvinist/Reformed theology maintains that the Bible teaches:

                        1. God, the Father, unconditionally elects those whom He chooses.

                        2. Jesus, the Son died for and redeemed His people.

                        3. The Holy Spirit regenerates and sanctifies His people.