Neither
pray I for these alone, but for them also which shall believe on me through
their word; That they all may be one; as
thou, Father, art in me, and I in thee, that they also may be one in us: that
the world may believe that thou hast sent me (John 17:20-21).
ARMINIAN ARGUMENT:
“In John 17:9, Jesus is indeed
praying for His disciples only: ‘I pray for them: I pray not for the world, but
for them which thou hast given me; for they are thine.’ But, later in
that same chapter, He prays for the salvation of the world: ‘that the
world may believe that thou hast sent me’ (21) … In case it be argued that Christ
cannot pray something that doesn’t come to pass, what about His prayer at
Gethsemane? (Mark 14:36) Wasn’t Jesus praying for something that didn’t come to
pass or that wasn’t granted by the Father? (namely, “let this cup pass from me”?).
If so, surely it would allow for other unanswered prayers … such as …
Christ praying ‘that the world may believe that thou hast sent me’?”
(I)
Prof. Herman C. Hanko
[Source: Covenant Reformed News, vol.
17, no. 15 (July, 2019)]
I do not know exactly how long I have written in the News but it has got to be
over twenty years. I suspect that in that time questions involving the “world”
have been asked more than any other in a vain attempt to prove from Scripture a
universal atonement made by our Lord and Saviour. (Christ’s priestly office
includes both His sacrifice and His prayers on the basis of His sacrifice, so
all efforts to prove a universal intercession of Jesus necessarily involve
universal atonement.)
Arminians have no conception of the emphasis on
organisms in Scripture and, therefore, will never be convinced that the “world”
means anything other than every individual head for head. I shall try again.
When I speak of “organisms,” I refer to the fact that, in the work of
salvation, God does not deal with individuals isolated from other people in the
creation. Perhaps it would be well if I would write some articles on this very
truth, without which the Scriptures cannot be interpreted correctly.
At any rate, here is another attempt to deal with
the same question of the universality of the cross and atonement of our Lord
Jesus Christ. First of all, a few remarks are in order concerning the prayers
of Christ in which He supposedly prays for all men absolutely and thus He
sometimes prays to the Father with petitions that are not answered.
I really find it difficult to imagine that anyone
could possibly believe that our Lord Jesus Christ could pray to the Triune God
and make a request that He refused to answer. It is wrong on the very surface.
Besides, the Arminian position calls Christ a liar,
for it contradicts His express words: “Father, I thank thee that thou hast
heard me. And I knew that thou hearest me always” (John 11:41-42).
Moreover, if it were true that Christ was turned
away from His Father, because He asked for something that His Father refused to
grant, Christ is no longer the eternal Son of God, the Second Person of the
Trinity. Does Christ, personally the eternal Son, not know all the will of the
Triune God? Of course, He knows. Why then would He ask for something He knows
He will not receive? The Arminian denies the divinity of our Lord Jesus Christ
when he teaches that He ever made a prayer to the Father that is unanswered.
Let the Arminian give that some serious thought, for
to deny Christ, in fact or by implication, puts one in the camp of the
Antichrist: “Beloved, believe not every spirit, but try the spirits whether
they are of God: because many false prophets are gone out into the world. Hereby
know ye the Spirit of God: Every spirit that confesseth that Jesus Christ is
come in the flesh is of God: And every spirit that confesseth not that Jesus
Christ is come in the flesh is not of God: and this is that spirit of
antichrist, whereof ye have heard that it should come; and even now already is
it in the world” (I John 4:1-3).
But the Arminian commits the same deadly error when
he claims that Christ died for all men, because the word “world,” so he says,
means every man, woman and child; every aborted baby and every monster of
iniquity (e.g., Hitler, Stalin, Pol Pot). But I do not know of anyone, save a
few ardent universalists, who believes that everyone is saved.
Of course, if the word “world” means every person
that ever lived or will live in the world or in his mother’s womb, then it is
also true, as has been shown by theologians since the time of Augustine
(354-430), that Christ’s cross was ineffectual for the majority of people. And
if it is ineffective for the majority of people, then why is it not also
ineffectual for the elect—for you and for me?
The Arminian gets
around this obvious truth by saying, “Jesus only died to make salvation
available or possible, but salvation ultimately depends on the will of man and
his acceptance of Christ.”
The Roman Catholic Church heartily embraces the
heresy of free will because it is compelled to protect its awful doctrine of
meriting with God. Erasmus, an enemy of the Reformation, wrote a book defending
free will. Luther utterly destroyed its teachings in his The
Bondage of the Will (1525). The German Reformer considered it,
along with his commentary on Galatians, to be the two books he would most want
to preserve, if all his other books were destroyed. In his preface to The Bondage of the Will, Luther complimented
Erasmus for underscoring the most fundamental point of the many differences
between Rome and Wittenberg.
Earlier, the doctrine of free will was emphatically
repudiated by Augustine when he refuted the heresies of the Pelagians and
Semi-Pelagians. The Synod of Dordt rightly said of free will that it is the old
Pelagian error brought once again out of hell (II:R:3).
Why do so many today embrace this terrible error
that has been rejected for centuries by the church of Christ? The only answer
is that they do not want God to have all the glory for His mighty work of grace
in Jesus Christ, but want to retain some tattered rags of their own pride by
insisting that they and/or the unconverted are able to do something towards
their salvation.
The answer to such
nonsense is what an old and uneducated farmer in the Netherlands, who had more
theological sense than all the Arminians, said to his pastor, Rev. Hendrik De
Cock: “If I had to contribute even so much as one sigh to my salvation, I would
be lost.”
Arminianism is ungodly heresy. I wish that the
Arminians would stop twisting Scripture to try to make God’s Word say what it
does not say (II Pet. 3:16), and humble themselves before the great glory of
the infinitely blessed Trinity to whom alone be praise forever and ever.
---------------------------------------------------
(II)
More to come! (DV)
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