Systematic Theology (2 Volumes) by John Miley

Author:John Miley
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Protestantism, Methodist, Theology, Systematic, Religion & Spirituality, Christian Books & Bibles
ISBN: 9781179601229
Publisher: BiblioBazaar
Published: 2011-09-14T20:00:00+00:00

III. The True Arminian Doctrine

1. Native Depravity without Native Demerit.—We have previously shown that native depravity as a fact, and its sinfulness in a sense to deserve divine punishment, are distinct questions, and open to separate answers. The truth of the latter is no consequence of the truth of the former. We have maintained the reality of native depravity, but controverted the doctrine of its intrinsic demerit, and have no occasion to renew the discussion. The present aim is to point out the true position of Arminianism on the question of native sinfulness in the sense of penal desert, whether assumed to be grounded in a participation in the sin of Adam or in the corruption of nature inherited from him. That position, as we view it, is accurately expressed in the above heading: native depravity without native demerit. Native depravity is a part of the Arminian system, and entirely consistent with its principles; native demerit is discordant and contradictory.

The question may be tested by the principle of freedom in Arminianism. There is no more fundamental principle. It occupies much the same position in this system that the divine sovereignty occupies in Calvinism. As this sovereignty underlies the predestination, the monergism, the irresistibility of grace, and the final perseverance, in the one; so freedom underlies the synergism, the real conditionality of salvation, and the possibility of apostasy in the other. In Arminianism freedom must include the power of choosing the good, as the necessary ground of a responsible probation. Repentance and faith as requisite to salvation must be possible; punishable deeds must be avoidable; responsible duties must be practicable. This is the meaning of Arminianism in the maintenance of a universal grace through a universal atonement; a grace which lifts up mankind into freedom, with power to choose the good. Such freedom is the condition of moral responsibility; and without it we could be neither sinful nor punishable, because our moral life could not proceed from our own personal agency. This is the doctrine of Arminianism, always and every-where firmly maintained. But if we could not be sinful and punishable in our actual life without free personal agency, or through morally necessitated evil deeds, how can we be sinful and punishable through the sin of Adam, or on the ground of an inherited corruption of nature? Nothing could be more utterly apart from our own agency than the one or the other. Nothing could be imposed by a more absolute necessitation. Native sinfulness in the sense of punitive desert is, therefore, openly contradictory to the deepest and most determining principle of the Arminian system.

With the doctrine of native demerit there is confusion and contradiction in the Arminian treatment of original sin. This result is not from any unskillful handling of that doctrine, but from its intrinsic opposition to the ruling principles of this system. The attempted adjustment to these principles finds no resting-place until it reaches a free cancellation of that form of sin through the grace of a universal atonement.

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