final thoughts

the first part of the last chapter. still working on the next-to-last chapter.

Finally, we’ve reached the end of My First Theology Book (mine, unlikely yours). I despise bad theology and Arminianism holds the honor as the worst theology to ever gain a stranglehold within the Church for the longest time.

Free will sounds like solid theology. It leads to responsibility, and responsibility leads to morality, and that is the goal, right? God wants moral people. False. That is not God’s goal. Free will may logically lead to moral responsibility, but it does so at the expense of the sovereignty of God. Free will necessarily denies God’s sovereignty, and when I say “necessarily,” I mean to say that we can arrive at no other conclusion, biblically, logically, or truthfully. This is why the consistent Arminians explicitly tell us that God is not sovereign, because “he chooses not to be.”

If men have free will, then God is not sovereign, as sovereignty requires sovereignty over the will of men.

The two are incompatible. Arminian theology, with free will at the core, denies the deity of God. God reigns sovereignly and this is a necessary attribute of his deity. He is not God without it. If you say, “He chooses to not be sovereign,” then you are saying, “He chooses to cease being God.” You speak nonsense.

The only way God can possibly choose to allow men their free will, to step back and not control, guide, intend every thought, deed, or word of men, is if he believed that they are wiser, more loving, and more powerful than him. If God allows men their free will, he must believe that they can order the universe better, with more blessed outcomes, with more souls saved, with more glory to him, than if he ordered the universe himself. The other option is that God allows men their free will because he knows they cannot order an improved universe, guarantee more salvations, or greater honor to himself, and he allows this because he hates men and despises his own glory. This is the arrogance of Arminianism.

God does not seek moral people, or even primarily holy people. God desires, above and before all else, to glorify his name. Only this paradigm fits everything in scripture. How else can we explain the death of Christ? How else can we explain that God ordained, allowed, and desired the most immoral act in all of history?