1) Arminians have too lofty a view of the human condition and an inadequate understanding of God's Sovereign Love in Christ.
Would you care to elaborate how our view of the human condition is too lofty? In what way is our human condition less that yours?
Well you are a indeterminist incompatibilist, which means divine Sovereignty has always posed a problem for you and Arminianism. In your theology a sinner's free-will is violated. So in your view a sinner's free-will is above God's Sovereignty.
2) Arminianism & Semi-Pelagianism are like Brother & Sister
Falsehood! Care to explain?
A course, both are Synergistic.
3) They believe & Teach Total Depravity,
Care to provide the Arminian teaching regarding it?
We wipe away nothing! God does, but we do not.
I think you misunderstood, because I don't understand your answer.
God is only a bystander in hopes that they make the right decision to be saved.
God has already done, accomplished, and finished all that was needed to effect salvation, but he also places the contingency of belief at the end of his procession of his activity. John 3:16, along with all the other commands to believe, never say "to those who are given belief" will receive life everlasting! It is God that places this human requirement in the protocol! (Belief is joined by confession and repentance as a tri-unity of human response that must all be accomplished!)
So you are suggesting that a sinner who is not fully Regenerated by the Holy Spirit, is placed in position to make a decision, and that this happens to EVERYONE, correct? So please if you would explain the Arminian version of Prevenient Grace for us?
So the sinner is never fully regenerated by the Holy Spirit, they're partially regenerated and placed in limbo between Life & Death where they decide to accept and go to heaven or reject it and go to hell. Which makes no sense, because who would ever want to got to hell?
Saying that we are partially regenerated is a straw man argument. We are regenerated, brought back to full life, abundant life, when we believe! That is the scriptural protocol!
Okay? This presents more problems for you. Here's what James Arminius wrote, "But in lapse and sinful state, man is not capable, of and by himself, either to think, to will, or to do that which is really good; but it is necessary for him to be regenerated and renewed in his intellect, affections or will, and in all his powers, by God in Christ through the Holy Spirit, that he may be qualified rightly to understand, esteem, consider, will..
Now, if this sinner is regenerated with all his faculties are renewed in his intellect, affections or will, and in ALL his powers to understand God, and the plight they're in. Why on earth would anyone, want to reject God? If Total Depravity of man is condemnation & death, and man is in bondage to sin and death. But made alive by God to decide their fate, either Heaven or Hell, why would anyone chose hell?
See what I fail to see in Arminian Theology is the Covenant of Redemption & Covenant of Grace, that God made a Promise to his people, that he will do what we could not do.
Ezekiel 36:
26 And
I will give you a new heart, and a new spirit
I will put within you. And
I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh.
27 And
I will put my Spirit within you, and
cause you to walk in my statutes and be careful to obey my rules.
28 You shall dwell in the land that I gave to your fathers, and you shall be
my people, and
I will be your God.
God has accomplished everything he promised; an Oath he swore. Our Redemption, all of it, is his doing. Even James Arminius stated, but yet not without continued aides of divine Grace. So without it we can do nothing.
So either Grace is Effectual as God intended, or effectual by our activity; meaning the sinner's libertarian free-will choice to accept or reject God's Grace. So partial meaning not fully regenerated by Holy Spirit, because it's the decision of this sinner to make God's Grace effectual, a Life or Death decision. This is not a strawman, Doug, because a sinner does possess the power to reject this, correct?
Please quote any legitimate Arminian source that teaches this. Grace that will save all is a stronger grace that that extended only to the few. Christ loses nothing in being rejected, for he does not need to be accepted by anyone. He, as God, needs nothing outside of himself to maintain his integrity and being. Christ said "It is finished" from the cross, and his work was done completely. The only question is 'do I believe in what he has done?'
Christ did not come to die in vain. He died with a purpose of saving those whom the Father gave to him to save (John 10). Ephesians 1:
3 Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places,
4 even as
he chose us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before him. In love
5 he predestined us for adoption to himself as sons through Jesus Christ, according to the purpose of his will,
6 to the praise of his glorious grace, with which he has blessed us in the Beloved.
But your outlook is that, when people get regenerated they can reject God's Grace, their libertarian free-will supersedes God's Grace. But I ask you again, if they are fully regenerated and renewed in their intellect, affections, and wills, why would they reject God, if they know the truth?
Pure rhetorical balderdash! We believe Christ alone can save, and there is salvation in no other name! No action of man, in and of itself, can effect or obligate God to save him! If we truly believe, we will act like it; and we will act like it only because of the Spirit's power within us enabling us as we act upon that belief. Without him, we can do nothing!
Doug
So is faith the root or fruit of your Salvation?