#CALVIN AND ARMINIUS FOR FREE#
When the general question, does man have a free will? is directed to John Calvin and James Arminius, the received and oft-repeated answer is that Calvin, jealous for the glory of God, opposes free will and that Arminius, being human-centered, advocates for free will, thus robbing God of his glory. Looking for deeper insights into an age-old debate on the question of the issue of free will in the theology of Calvin and Arminius? Youve come to the right place. Zondervan Professor of Historical Theology, Emeritus, Calvin Theological Seminary For those who seek a better understanding of the positions of Calvin and Arminius on mans free will, this book offers an i Muller, Senior Fellow, Junius Institute for Digital Reformation Research, and P. Headley interacts cogently with the extant scholarship and the primary sources and ably demonstrates both the common ground and the substantive differences between the Calvinist and Arminian theologies. Alrick Headleys work provides a finely argued entry point into the views of Calvin and Arminius, especially notable for its examination of human willing in the four states of human nature. For Calvin, free will is a gift of grace, for Arminius, it is a gift of grace and nature. However, they differ significantly on the location, efficacy, and function of that free will. Moreover, though for different reasons and with many nuances, Calvin and Arminius do agree seventy-five percent of the time-in the created, the redeemed, and the glorified state-that human beings possess free will. For, by using the fourfold state of human beings as the lens through which to ask and answer the question, it is shown here that the glory of God constitutes the main reason underlying both Calvins opposition to, and Arminiuss advocacy of, free will. This book shows, through a fresh look at the original sources, that the above characterization of the differences between Calvin and Arminius on the nature of the human will is misguided. Here was a book with which to confront Christians still loyal to the pope in Rome, who taunted the Protestants as ridden with factions and unsystematic in their theology: all the more formidable a weapon because it was so clearly under an intellectual debt to the greatest name of early Christian thought in the West: Augustine, Bishop of Hippo.Looking for deeper insights into an age-old debate on the question of the issue of free will in the theology of Calvin and Arminius? Youve come to the right place. Calvin had successfully outridden all opposition to turn his adopted city of Geneva into the nearest thing that human frailty could create to a Protestant heaven on earth, structured on the principles which Calvin himself had set out in a great work of theological reflection and analysis, the Christianae Religionis Institutio (generally known more conveniently in the British Isles as the Institutes). When Arminius was born in the little Netherlands town of Oudewater in 1560, John Calvin was still at the height of his power in Switzerland. The story of Arminius and the Arminians, who so agitated both the United Provinces of the Netherlands and the kingdom of England, can only be understood against the wider canvas of the sixteenth-century Reformation.