The Evangelical Universalist Forum

Arminian Theology and Prevenient Grace

Theology Philosophical
#1

I’m hoping someone familiar with Arminian theology might be able to answer a question for me:

As I understand prevenient grace it frees a person from the totally depraved state and into freedom. Roger Olson writes “From the Arminian perspective prevenient grace restores free will so that humans, for the first time, have the ability to do otherwise - namely, respond in faith to the grace of God or resist it in unrepentance and disbelief.”

Here’s my question:

If All men are all condemned by the one act of disobedience then prior to prevenient grace, is the person not responsible for the condemnation they are under (from Adam’s sin)?

The point is that PG is designed to make people responsible for their actions. However, does this imply that prior to prevenient grace’s freeing a person, that person is not responsible? That would seem to me to be totally antithetical to Paul’s approach that man is responsible and is punishable.

Any thoughts would be appreciated.

Aug

#2

Correction: I am correcting my statement that PG is designed to make people responsible. Actually if I understand it correctly it, the doctrine is declared to explain how a totally depraved sinner actually comes to faith in Jesus Christ. I don’t want to misrepresent Arminians.

However, I’m still boggled at this idea helb by Arminians and Catholics (I believe it was the Catholic church which devoloped the concept - possibly Thomas Aquinas’ “sufficient grace”).

Aug

#3

I think part of the problem is that some (not all) Arms have a notion of prevenient grace that is chronological rather than ontological. For which there does seem to be some Biblical warrant!–but also for the ontological priority of prevenient grace. So it’s another both/and scriptural testimony.

In the ontological sense, prevenient grace is why we are rational souls at all who can choose one thing and not another (and so who can also repent). This, by the way, is why some Calvs consider the non-elect as not being persons at all but only as zombies (in the philosophical sense–I’m just about sure a Calv philosopher was who came up with that idea for philosophy, too, btw… :wink: ) In that sense, those Calvs are in fact just as much Christian universalists as we are!–God will persist to success in saving all sinners who by God’s grace are actually persons. It’s the same thing in principle as those universalists who don’t believe in the real existence of rebel angels; those sorts of Calvs just scope it out wider to include many apparent humans as non-persons who, by God’s choice, will never be persons. (Other Calvs, along with all Arms I suppose, and Kaths such as myself, would say this makes a hash out of many scriptural testimonies about God punishing people post-mortem as if they actually personally deserved it.)

Chronologically? I suppose there’s a sense in which that happens, but it’s not long before or after birth!–we’re talking about when a person becomes a spiritual soul at all. The Arminians you’re thinking of, though, are talking about prevenient grace being given at a much later time. I think they’re mixing up categories: the capability of free will to choose for good or evil, and the data for choosing good or evil (or maybe more specifically for loyalty to God or rebellion against God.)

People might not have accurate data, at this or that level of particularity, until long after God has given them the capability to use or abuse the data. That capability is the freedom of the will; the data is what the person is free to do with.

The capability and the data are both directly and by mediation only possible through God’s grace. That may be where the category error is happening: both are by God’s grace, so (wrongly) there is no distinction between capability and data.

#4

Jason: I think part of the problem is that some (not all) Arms have a notion of prevenient grace that is chronological rather than ontological.

Tom: Bingo! Couldn’t have said it any better or more precisely myself. This is EXACTLY the Eastern view.

I’m kissing you Jason. :confused:

Tom

#5

Anyone catch that on camera?? :mrgreen:

Interesting … this is unfamiliar territory for me…

So does prevenient grace have anything to do with Romans 1 “they are without excuse” or is that another thing?
Sonia

#6

Jason,
Can you define for me the difference of the two. Also would either Chronological or Ont. imply that they both embrace total depravity?

#7

I can tell you what I think Jason was getting at (with the distinction between chronological vs ontological understandings of grace), and certainly what I would mean by using the same distinction. Basically it’s the difference between Western and Eastern views of grace. It’s a generalization, but basically Western views of grace see grace as something God dolls out now here, now there (and thus the chronological view). Grace is a kind of commodity or product that God gives on occasion. The East takes a very different view. Basically the East says grace is God present in creation’s very being holding the cosmos together and forever extending to created entities the possibility of Godward movement. So in the East grace is more the ‘context’ in which creation exists or the sea in which we swim. So it’s quite impossible to exist at all and be cut off from grace, since to exist is to have (ontologically speaking) the God of love and grace present to one’s being.

How this effects totally depravity is that in the West you can have total depravity—the complete corruption of human nature. That’s not possible in the East for the simple reason that (ontologically speaking) whatever exists does so by virtue of the sustaining grace of God present to it, offering it life and inviting it toward himself. In the West created nature can be totally depraved because grace is understood as an event of God inserting himself into creation now here, now there. But in the East nature can never be totally depraved because grace is understood as that which accounts for nature’s being at all.

One more thing about the East (and some in the West). It’s not the case that human beings only need grace after the Fall (as if we didn’t need God’s grace before we fell). This is another typical Western misunderstanding of grace (according to the East), i.e., that grace is something God does in response to sin in order to save fallen human beings. In the East to be human is to be in grace, to need God, and this is true of our nature quite independent of sin. Our natural (unfallen) state is to be dependent upon the grace of God, to need God and to have to trust him. So grace becomes how and why we exist at all, and so long as we do exist we may move in that grace toward God and toward the fulfillment of our natures.

Tom

#8

Tom, I’m sure some great debates regarding this issue have taken place between eastern and western thinkers. Off the top of my head, it seems both sides will have quite an arsenal of arguments to support their views.

But I’m not referring to Eastern thinking here. I’m inquiring regardning Arminian theology’s Prevenient Grace. If from an eastern perspective, total depravity is not possible, then Arminians must be western because they embrace total depravity. So if what you say is accurate in explaining JP’s post, then JP has not really addressed what I see as problematic for Arminians.

JP, did TGB read you right?

#9

I’ve got a couple of very interesting books that document Wesley’s dependency upon the Eastern Fathers. It’s very interesting. But generally, I think a lot of Arminians (those who view grace in more Western terms but who also posit prevenient grace) are a bit confused. I think the instincts behind their positing prevenient grace are right on and the Eastern view best fulfills those instincts. But what makes it difficult to explain how grace prevenes within their own system is their holding to total depravity. What they end up having to do, I think, is argue that prevenient grace is (in the Western sense) God positively deciding to overcome the effects of total depravity so that people are able to respond to the gospel positively while remaining free to say no to it. But in my view this is essentially a denial of TOTAL depravity. I mean, if the grace that overcomes total depravity really PREVENES upon all hearts and minds empowering us to say ‘yes’, there’s no meaningful sense left to say depravity is total. One thing that makes it difficult within the Arminian system to the extent that if fails to view grace ontologically, is that it tends to ground our need for grace in our deprativty. This is a key difference between East and West. By grounding/locating our need for grace in how depraved we are, the West assumes that if we weren’t depraved we wouldn’t need grace. In the East the human need for grace is grounded in finitude pure and simple. Had we never fallen into sin we would still be incomplete, would still need God, and would still need to trust God’s word and promise.

Tom

#10

Tom,

Yes, that’s exactly how my thoughts took flight. Then was one side of the coin; if in fact people were born with PG or if they received it nearly after birth. But what if (like most Arminians that I’ve talked to) PG comes to them on particular days and times in their lives when the gospel is preached.

Suppose a young man of 30 years of age receives the gospel message from John Wesley himself. And suppose that God douses him with PG. -

As I understand the Arminians I’ve spoken to, it’s because he was totally depraved - unable to move toward God with no freewill.

But what does that say when he was totally depraved at 29? This means that all his sins were not his own. This means that up to 30 years of age, he was not accountable for his sins. This means their intepretation of Romans 1 requires no PG (as Sonia has mentioned), because this young man has an excuse (at least up to the age of 30).

So the only alternative was that he was born with it which falls prey to your point that men really aren’t totally depraved because of PG. The whole things really is a mess.