The Similarity between Arminians and Catholics in Regard to Their Commonly Held Understanding of the Doctrine of Justification

By Mark W. Christy, PhD

Today, most evangelicals believe that both Calvinism and Arminianism both arise from a common bulwark of the Reformation. This bulwark, the doctrine of justification by grace alone through faith alone, is indeed heralded, at least linguistically, by both sides. Even so, many scholars over the centuries have accused Arminians of being more in league with the Roman Catholics on this doctrinal issue. In this article, the writings of Arminius and Luther will be weighed against relevant sections of the Catechism of the Catholic Church (CCC) to determine whether or not any such criticism is just.

Jacobus Arminius, while defending himself against the charge of being in sync with the Papists (i.e., the Roman Catholics) in regard to the doctrine of Justification by grace alone through faith alone, contended that he held an entirely different view from theirs.[i] According to him, “[s]ufficient grace,” which is also known as saving grace and prevenient grace, “‘is offered to the Elect and Non-elect,’ because it is offered to unbelievers, whether they will afterwards believe or not believe.”[ii]

For Arminius and his followers, God, through Christ’s work on the cross, distributed His saving grace to all people such that all people are left with the choice of whether to respond to God’s offer (or plan) of salvation. If they receive His gracious offer by an act of their own freewill, they will then be saved. As Arminius puts it,

“‘If they will, they may believe’ that is, either by their own powers, or as they are excited and assisted by this grace. ‘Or they may not believe,’ while rejecting this grace by their own free will, and resisting it. ‘They may be saved or not saved,’ that is, — saved by the admission and right use of grace, — not saved by their own [militia] wickedness, rejecting that without which they cannot be saved.”[iii]

Despite Arminius’s attempt to place himself squarely in the reformed camp by pleading his affirmation that salvation was by grace alone through faith alone, many Calvinistic scholars have since declared his declaration to be duplicitous. After all, the views of Arminius closely accord with those of Erasmus (a Catholic humanist) who challenged Martin Luther in regard to the relationship between the freewill of humanity and God’s grace in salvation. Acknowledging the central importance of this topic to the reformed understanding of salvation, Luther himself, in his famous engagement with Erasmus in The Bondage of the Will, referred his own views concerning the freewill and its relation to God’s grace in salvation as “the grand turning point of the cause,” “the grand hinge upon which the whole turned,” and “the vital part.”[iv]

While Erasmus, like Arminius, affirmed the doctrine of the original sin, he nevertheless argued that humans possess a freewill that is wholly capable of accepting or resisting God’s grace. Obviously, this position ran directly counter to the reformed views of Luther who believed that the original sin had totally corrupted humanity to the point where all humanity was hopelessly stuck in spiritual state of bondage and only God’s grace could irresistibly bring them to salvation. To put this another way, the Arminians contended that human freewill plays an active role in salvation, whereas those following Luther and Calvin believe that role to be purely passive. Conversely, Arminians limit God’s role in salvation to a degree since God’s actions depend upon a human freewill response, while those aligned with the great reformers place no such limitations on God’s salvific acts in regard to a person. For them, everything hinges upon God’s sovereign and absolutely freewill in the election of those whom He chooses to graciously save. This, as has already been noted, is Luther’s “grand hinge” of the Reformation, and it is this that Arminius sought to undermine in his reassertion of the human freewill.

Observing this overt similarity between Erasmus’s views and those of Arminius, James White writes, “One cannot claim to be faithful to the Reformation by crying ‘sola fide’ [i.e., justification by faith alone] when the foundation of that call [i.e., God’s sovereignty in election] is abandoned. The truth that God saves by Himself, by His own power, on the basis of His own will, defines the message of the Reformers.”[v] Since Arminius failed to maintain the reformed view that a person’s salvation is solely based on God’s sovereign and free elective chosen with no active role left for the human recipient, many scholars connect the views of Arminius and his followers on this topic with those of the Roman Catholic Church.

Noting this connection, White points out that “Rome likewise limits grace to a prompting, aiding force which can, and often does, fail to accomplish its goal. This is what divided the pioneer Reformers from the Roman Catholics.[vi] To further support his contention, it would be wise to consider the Roman Catholic teaching regarding the role of the human free will in salvation.

For their part, the Catholics believe that the human freewill somehow, despite the original sin of Adam and Eve, maintained its capacity to rightly choose God. In their view, fallen humanity retains the ability to actively respond to God, “God created man a rational being, conferring on him the dignity of a person who can initiate and control his own actions. God willed that man should be ‘left in the hand of his own counsel,’ so that he might of his own accord seek his Creator and freely attain his full and blessed perfection by cleaving to him” (CCC1730).

In their positing of this positive view of humanity’s rational acumen, the CCC writers fail to provide any Scriptural basis. One wonders, for instance, how they can rightly hold to such a stance given Paul’s less the stellar assessment of the human intellect due to the effects of the original sin. In Romans 1:18, Paul notes that all unregenerate people “suppress the truth in unrighteousness.” Despite this, the Apostle still claims that although these truth suppressors “knew God, they did not honor Him as God or give thanks, but they became futile in their speculations, and their foolish heart was darkened” (v.21). Calling them “fools,” Paul goes on to remark that they were “without understanding” (vv.22, 31).

While Paul’s arguments render the human freewill powerless due to its being deadlocked in willful ignorance, the Catholics (who once again provide no Scriptural basis for their position) support Arminius in his view that the human freewill retains power to rise above whatever effects the original sin may have upon the flesh:

“Freedom is the power, rooted in reason and will, to act or not to act, to do this or that, and so to perform deliberate actions on one’s own responsibility. By free will one shapes one’s own life. Human freedom is a force for growth and maturity in truth and goodness; it attains its perfection when directed toward God, our beatitude” (CCC1731).

In direct opposition to these teachings from Rome which accord with those of Arminius, Paul proclaimed a gospel that was imbued with “God’s wisdom,” “the hidden wisdom which God predestined before the ages to our glory” (1 Cor 2:7). This wisdom, he adds, was unavailable to the “rulers of [his] age” who “crucified the Lord of glory” (v.8). In other words, those rulers acted in a state of spiritual ignorance.

This wisdom, which the rulers did not possess, apparently was also withheld from humanity up until the time of Christ’s death because, Paul says, no one had “seen” or “heard” it; furthermore, it had not even “entered the heart of man” (v.9). This being the case, to whom does God avail this knowledge since He had not given it to anyone up until the day of Christ’s crucifixion? Does He give to everyone after Christ’s atoning work as the Arminians would have it?

In 1 Corinthians 2:9, Paul informs his readers that God’s hidden wisdom has been “prepared for those who love Him.” According to him, God’s people receive this wisdom when the Holy Spirit reveals it (v.9). Apparently, the reception of this wisdom coincides the indwelling of the Spirit: “Now we have received, not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, so that we may know the things freely given to us by God, which things we also speak, not in words taught by human wisdom, but in those taught by the Spirit, combining spiritual thoughts with spiritual words” (vv.12-13).

Unlike those who have been given what Paul calls “the mind of Christ” (v.16), the unregenerate remained entrapped is a state of ignorance whereby they are spiritually incapable of responding rightly to the gospel: “a natural man does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him; and he cannot understand them, because they are spiritually appraised” (v.14). Given Paul’s assessment of the minds of the unredeemed, it seems foolhardy for Catholics and Arminians to hold out any hope for the unregenerate to rightly understand the gospel and receive salvation. In response to this, they may respond by simply saying that God’s grace in salvation has been extended to all unregenerate people such that their minds have been rendered capable of making a saving response.

This attempt to maintain their view, however, does not adjust well to Paul’s teachings. It has already been noted that spiritual wisdom is conjoined to the Spirit of God and imparted unto a person at the time that person becomes indwelled by the Spirit. Also, this wisdom, which was only “prepared for those who love” God, lies outside a person’s “heart” (v.9). The “heart,” in Semitic imagery, served as a locus of cognition. For this reason, Paul could properly place the darkened heart of the unregenerate person in juxtaposition with “the mind of Christ” of those who had been indwelled by the Spirit.

For those who may still be unwilling to concede to Paul’s argument, Paul goes on, in his 2^nd letter to the Corinthians, to speak of how the “gospel is veiled…to those who are perishing” (4:3). Why is it veiled? At this point, the faithful Catholic and Arminian may would argue that the gospel is veiled because the unregenerate refuse to make a freewill response. Paul, however, corrects this notion by placing the blame ultimately upon Satan himself: “the god of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelieving so that they might not see the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God” (4). Effectively, Paul is saying that the unregenerate have been spiritually blinded and preconditioned by Satan himself (through the fall of Adam and Eve) so that their minds lack the ability to rightly understand the gospel.

Echoing much of what has already been said, Paul, writing to Christians, announces in Ephesians 4:17-18, “you walk no longer just as the Gentiles also walk, in the futility of their mind, being darkened in their understanding, excluded from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them, because of the hardness of their heart.” According to Paul, the pervasive spiritual ignorance that was attached to the unredeemed in their natural state prevented them from accepting the gospel “because of the hardness of their heart” (i.e., their full encasement is a spiritual state of rebellion).

Despite Paul’s plainly obvious assessment of the hopeless state of the unregenerate, the Catholics prefer to hold to a more positive view. While they gladly confirm Christ’s words in Matthew 4:19-20 concerning the evil that resides in the human heart, they still believe that “in the heart also resides charity, the source of the good and pure works, which sin wounds” (CCC1853). This semi-Pelagian understanding of the fallen human state is commonly held by those who follow Arminius, as such a stance allows opportunity for the unregenerate to make a freewill response to the gospel apart from any direct aid from the Holy Spirit. This belief, as has already been proven, does not align with Pauline theology, and is therefore foreign to God’s revelation in Scripture concerning salvation by grace through faith.

Showing complete disregard for the clear biblical teachings, Catholics, like Arminians, affirm that

“Justification establishes cooperation between God’s grace and man’s freedom. On man’s part it is expressed by the assent of faith to the Word of God, which invites him to conversion, and in the cooperation of charity with the prompting of the Holy Spirit who precedes and preserves his assent: When God touches man’s heart through the illumination of the Holy Spirit, man himself is not inactive while receiving that inspiration, since he could reject it; and yet, without God’s grace, he cannot by his own free will move himself toward justice in God’s sight” (CCC1993).

This deliberate conflagration of salvation by grace and faith with an active and necessary part to play for the human freewill of the unregenerate is completely foreign to the Reformers from the time of Luther onward.

In conclusion, Arminius, despite his arguments to the contrary, essentially echoed the teachings of the Papists concerning the most central doctrine of the Reformation, namely justification by grace alone through faith alone. Since his time, both Arminians and Catholics continue to affirm an active role for the human freewill in salvation apart from any regenerating work by the Holy Spirit. This willful elevation of the human will hardly aligns with Luther who saw the freewill as “the servant and bond-slave of evil; because, it cannot turn itself unto good.”[vii]

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[i]Jacobus Arminius, The Works of James Arminius, D.D., vol. 2, trans. by James Nichols (London: Longman, Bees, Orme, Brown, and Green, 1828), 46.

[ii]Ibid., 48.

[iii]Ibid., 48.

[iv]Martin Luther, De Servo Arbitrio “On the Enslaved Will” or The Bondage of the Will (Grand Rapids: Christian Classics Ethereal Library, n.d.), 280, available at: https://ccel.org/ccel/l/luther/bondage/cache/bondage.pdf.

[v]James White, The Potter’s Freedom: A Defense of the Reformation and a Rebuttal of Norman Geisler’s Chosen But Free (Amityville, NY: Calvary, 2000), 36. Italics are his.

[vi]Ibid., 316.

[vii]Luther, The Bondage of the Will, 52.