The symposium on Arminianism and Adventism, held October 14-16, 2010 at Andrews University, attempted to analyze Adventist theology within a larger theological continuum, helping to explore the connections between Adventism and other religious traditions. The plenary papers addressed three major areas of concern: first, the Calvinist and Arminian understandings of God; second, Calvinist and Arminian positions regarding the assurance of salvation; and third, the relationship of Seventh-day Adventism to Arminianism.

Calvinism and Arminianism

Roger Olson, professor of theology at George W. Truett Theological Seminary of Baylor University, addressed Calvinist/Reformed arguments that Arminianism is a man-centered theology because it allegedly places the decision for salvation in Christ within the human will.² He responded to this criticism first by arguing that Calvinism, by placing all responsibility for determining who will be saved and who will be lost on God, makes God an ambiguous moral character. Furthermore, he said, the criticism is misplaced—the critics do not seem to have read Arminius or other classical Arminians such as the Remonstrants and John Wesley. Had they done so, they would have seen that, because of prevenient grace which gives the human being the power to choose to accept Christ, even repentance is a gift of God. Classical Arminianism emphasizes human free will in order to protect God’s goodness and clarify human responsibility for sin. But the free will decision to accept God’s gift is itself empowered by God’s grace. Nothing happens in the process of salvation apart from God. True faith is always accompanied by good works, but such works are not a part of faith or a condition of justification.

Barry Callen, University Professor Emeritus of Christian Studies at Anderson University, picked up on this theme of the human dimension. Agreeing with Olson, he stated that salvation comes only by unmerited divine grace, but added that it also involves a necessary human work. In contrast to Calvinism, which is monergistic since it places all action with God, Callen favors a synergistic approach, which involves a God-human relationship. While very concerned that we not tip the scales, that with Arminius we not “deviate from viewing salvation as a sheer gift of a gracious God,”³ he nonetheless criticized contemporary evangelical theology for undercutting “the conscious choice to exercise faith and the serious action required of believers for needed growth in the Christian life.”⁴

Hans K. LaRondelle’s analysis of biblical passages bearing on election and predestination, though not mentioning Calvinism, seems to fit with this group of papers.⁵ He noted passages from both the Old and New Testaments that speak of God choosing Israel, Christ choosing his disciples, and Christians as a chosen people. Throughout all of these elections God expects a response from the people he has chosen. Nonetheless, in line with Olson’s and Callen’s understanding of Arminianism, LaRondelle made clear that our decision to exercise faith, obey God’s will, and persevere in a sanctified life “are not meritorious works that contribute to our salvation.” But having said this, he also stated that an “authentic faith in Christ honors not only the sovereignty and the priority of God’s grace, but also seeks a faithful walk with Christ.”⁶

Assurance of Salvation

A second group of papers addressed the issue of the assurance of salvation. Woodrow W. Whidden asked which theological tradition, Calvinism or Arminianism, best provides assurance. He described God’s redeeming power as both a priori, which includes such elements as prevenient grace and forgiving grace, and a posteriori, which includes the sense that God is speaking to the individual and the “practical manifestations of the ‘fruit of the Spirit’ in the life of the believer.”⁷ He asserted that Calvinists and Arminians accept both of these categories, including “the full panoply of the a posteriori factors in the experience of saving assurance.”⁸ But because Calvinists have no way of knowing whether God has elected them to be saved, they have no built-in advantages regarding assurance. Therefore, along with Arminians, they “must search the contours of their personal experience of grace for any evidence of the a posteriori blessings that they are evidently and assuredly saved.”⁹

Courtesy of Darren Heslop

Regarding “once saved, always saved,” Whidden commented that, because Calvinism cannot provide any assurance that one was once saved, it is unable to effectively address the issue of perseverance. It can only suggest that if the apparently once converted individual falls away from the faith that person was not saved in the first place.¹⁰ Arminianism, again, provides a better response by giving the believer the ability to “decide to ignore the saving graces that placed him/her into the saving hand of the Father in the first place!”¹¹

Keith D. Stanglin addressed many of the same issues as Whidden, but placed them within the context of Arminius’ experience.¹² According to Stanglin, rather than pursuing abstract questions of theology, Arminius’ thinking arose out of his pastoral role in Amsterdam where he found that many people in his congregation either had no confidence in their election or, in contrast, were overconfident regarding their salvation. The former position led to despair, while the latter allowed the Christian to continue in his or her sinful ways.

The doctrine of assurance, therefore, became an important point of departure for Arminius’ teaching. Similar to Whidden, Stanglin presented Arminius’ discussion of a posteriori grounds of assurance (the sense of faith, internal testimony of the Spirit, the struggle of the Spirit against the flesh, and the desire to engage in good works) and the a priori grounds (God’s will that all be saved and the directing of His saving love toward those who are in Christ through faith). Arminius’ examination of the grounds of assurance for the believer led him to a revised theology of God, one that, in contrast to Calvinism, emphasized that “God’s act of creation is an act of love and grace for the purpose of eternal communion, an act in which God obliges himself to creation for its benefit.”¹³

In his concluding, practical reflections, Stanglin also addressed “once-saved, always saved” but was more concerned with its actual effects on the life of the Christian. He called that position “reductionistic” and expressed concern that it “expects little or no progress in Christian holiness.”¹⁴ Believing that sanctification is important, he stated that “good works are not a causal factor in obtaining or maintaining salvation. We are already saved; therefore, we want to do good works, and we do them.”¹⁵

Is Seventh-Day Adventism Arminian?

Finally, we come to the papers that address the relationship of Seventh-day Adventism to Arminianism. Consequent to discussing Arminius and The Remonstrance, Denis Fortin identified five elements of Arminius’ position that resonate with Adventism.¹⁶ First, there is the assertion that the individual needs to believe in Christ in order to be saved. Second, Arminius found repugnant the idea that God would predestine some people to eternal damnation before they came into existence. Third, human beings have freedom of the will. Fourth, God’s creation is good, something that is incompatible with the Calvinistic understanding that nearly everyone is predestined to damnation. Finally, sin causes damnation, a fact that again does not fit with Calvinistic supralapsarianism.

Authentic faith in Christ honors not only the sovereignty and the priority of God’s grace, but also seeks a faithful walk with Christ.

Addressing more specifically the Arminian elements of Adventist theology, Fortin observed that the motif of the Great Controversy “provides a theological framework that is dependent on an Arminian understanding of God’s relationship with sinners and the sinner’s need to respond to the gospel invitation.”¹⁷ Among the key elements in this understanding is the belief that God created individuals with free choice and through the Holy Spirit provides them with the grace to accept his mercy. Fortin concluded that Adventism is “fundamentally Arminian” and that the “core of its belief system is Arminianism.”¹⁸

For George Knight, however, the picture is more complicated. He asserted that the 1931/1946 statements of belief suggest a semi-Pelagian position by leaving “the impression that the initial moves toward salvation are up to the individual.”¹⁹ By contrast, the 1980 statement “makes significant strides in avoiding semi-Pelagianism,” particularly in Article 5, which “asserts that the Holy Spirit ‘draws and convicts human beings; and those who respond He renews and transforms.’” In Knight’s view, Article 5 “is a clear statement of prevenient grace even though it does not use that term.”²⁰ But is this 1980 wording so different from the earlier statements which state that the Holy Spirit “convinces of sin and leads to the Sin Bearer, inducting the believer into the new-covenant relationship…”?²¹

The Great Controversy “provides a theological framework that is dependent on an Arminian understanding of God’s relationship with sinners.”

Although “Earliest Adventism,” according to Knight, “definitely fit into the semi-Pelagian camp,”²² beginning in the 1880s, through the influence of Ellen G. White, Adventists began placing more emphasis on salvation in Christ. White, he argues, “had a belief akin to what most Protestants think of as total depravity,” regarding humans as unable to choose God through their own power, and saw the need for prevenient grace.²³ But Knight sees semi-Pelagianism mostly persisting throughout the twentieth century. William H. Branson came to the “frontier of prevenient grace” but failed to pass over, asserting that it is up to individuals to choose to accept God’s grace.²⁴ The only writer during this period that seemed to have a concept of prevenient grace was I. H. Evans,²⁵ but, as Knight observed, he had relatively little influence. Edward Heppenstall drew upon elements that pointed toward the necessity of prevenient grace but “definitely left the impression that fallen individuals had free choice in the face of God’s special revelation.”²⁶ Edward Vick and Hans K. LaRondelle were the most clearly Arminian, according to Knight.²⁷ But other names could probably be added to this list.

Conclusion

The plenary papers manifested a wide agreement in the promotion of a divine-human synergism in the salvific process and of God’s amazing grace as a necessity at every step in that process, even before the human agent feels any need of salvation. Human actions, which arise out of the desire to be in harmony with the divine Lawgiver and out of the assurance of justification and the Holy Spirit’s sanctifying guidance, are not the basis of salvation but the fruit of it. Divergent interpretations of historical sources regarding semi-Pelagianism vs. Arminianism calls for a thorough analysis of the sources. Standing in the Arminian tradition, Adventists do well to provide opportunities such as this for scholars and church members to reflect further on core aspects of salvation. In this connection, it would certainly be valuable to ponder the succinct synthesis of Ellen White in Steps to Christ, pp. 18-19, on a regular basis. The symposium proved significant in showing that Adventism’s soteriology stands in the Arminian-Wesleyan tradition.