THE ARMINIAN DEMIURGE

[Also posted at CRM with discussion in the comments section and further posts here and here]

Jared Nelson and I have had the privilege of teaching a great group of folks this semester at PCPC's Midweek. The class is called 12 Questions that have Shaped Church History. The subject is the history of doctrine in the Christian church. Each class is titled with a question. My last class was on this question: "How are the full benefits of Christ's atonement acquired?" We covered the development of the doctrine of particular redemption in the years following the Protestant and Roman Catholic reformations. A large portion time was spent discussing the Five Articles of Remonstrance delivered by the Arminians to the Dutch Reformed Church early in the 17th century.

I began the class as usual with a quick review of the questions we had addressed for each prior class. The first class dealt with the question "How has God revealed himself?" We examined the way Gnosticism, Ebionism, Marcionism, and Montanism understood divine revelation.

Gnosticism teaches that God reveals himself through a secret, higher, spiritual knowledge. The problem with humanity is ignorance; therefore the solution (i.e. gospel) is attaining a higher knowledge. Attaining higher knowledge is what saves people from evil.

You might then ask "What evil?" or "Where did this evil come from?" And that would be a good question. Philosophers and theologians have wrestled with the problem of the origin of evil for thousands of years. The way a system answers the question of the origin of evil will determine much of its makeup from that point forward. Before we move forward let me briefly clarify what I mean by the problem of evil. Simply stated the problem is this:

1. The world was created by an all-powerful and all-loving God.
2. Evil exists in the creation.
3. If God were all-powerful, he could immediately destroy evil.
4. If God were all-loving, he would immediately destroy evil.
5. Therefore, God cannot be both all-powerful and all-loving.

Gnostics explained the problem of the origin of evil by denying divine omnipotence through dualism (i.e. two-principle system). Dualism is a term used to describe any worldview that posits two fundamental opposing principles to explain the origin of evil; its opposite is monism (i.e. one-principle system). There are of course variations of dualism; but dualists basically understand evil to be the result of a fundamental principle which is, at least in some respect, outside the control of the good principle. In Gnosticism this fundamental principle is called the demiurge. The demiurge is the cause of the existence of evil in the world.

So what does this have to do Arminianism? Well, as my class discussed the difference between the Reformed definition of grace and the Arminian definition of grace, I made this statement (learned from my former theology professor Dr. John D. Hannah): "According to Reformed theology, grace isn't grace if it isn't discriminatory." Here's what I mean:

According to Arminianism

1. There will be two distinct types of people in the end, the redeemed and the damned.
2. Since all begin in the same place (i.e. as sinners equally deserving to be damned), something must cause the final distinction.
3. The work of prevenient grace is applied by God universally so that all who hear the gospel can either believe it unto salvation or reject it and stay on the same trajectory of damnation.
4. Therefore, the distinction between the redeemed and the damned is ultimately caused by the sinner himself.

According to Calvinism

1. There will be two distinct types of people in the end, the redeemed and the damned.
2. Since all begin in the same place (i.e. as sinners equally deserving to be damned), something must cause the final distinction.
3. The work of prevenient grace is applied by God discriminately so that all who receive it believe the gospel unto salvation.
4. Therefore, the distinction between the redeemed and the damned is ultimately caused by God alone.

The reformed understanding is that grace cannot be grace if it is not discriminatory, because if it is not discriminatory, the sinner ultimately makes the discrimination for himself with regard to his final end. If a sinner makes that distinction himself, then he is left with something of himself to boast about in his salvation. While many others who had the same opportunity and ability to believe did not believe, he did. That is ultimately why he enjoys a better end than them.

As I was thinking through this with the class, I made a connection with regard to dualism and the problem of evil. What the Arminian system is fundamentally doing through its understanding of grace is adopting a measure of dualism in order to resolve the problem of the origin of evil. Notwithstanding the wills of angels, the two fundamental opposing principles in the world, according to Arminianism, are the divine will and individual human wills. In a manner of speaking, the human will is the demiurge of Arminianism.

That's all well and good, but what's the point? Is it necessarily a bad thing that Arminianism is rooted in dualism?

I think it is for one reason: Dualism, by definition, requires one principle to be powerless to the other at some point, which means that neither principle can be omnipotent, and therefore neither can be God. Dualism shuts God out of an area of his creation, and therefore destroys the very concept of divinity altogether. In giving the human will the power of self-determination, it gives the creature the power, at least with respect to his moral decisions, to create ex nihilo.

This is why Jonathan Edwards worked so hard to stave off the Arminian insurgence into the church of his own day. His treatise Freedom of the Will is a fruit of that labor. Paul Ramsey writes of Edwards's thoughts on the Arminian doctrine of the human will:

For Edwards as a theologian the issue is a simple one: either contingency and the liberty of self-determination must be run out of this world, or God will be shut out. "If there be no absurdity or difficulty in supposing one thing to start out of nonexistence, into being, of itself without a cause; then there is no absurdity or difficulty in supposing the same of millions of millions" (p. 183) ("Editor's Introduction," Freedom of the Will vol. 1 of The Works of Jonathan Edwards, [New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1957], 9).