okinrus said:
I think your confusing this with pelagianism which is universally considered heresy by Christians because it defines that mankind can be saved by his own work alone. Arminianism does not seem as herectical as calvin's position but is still is wrong. Peter 2 says "For if they, having escaped the defilements of the world through the knowledge of our Lord and savior Jesus Christ, again become entangled and overcome by them, their last condition is worse than their first. For it would have been better for them not to have known the way of righteousness than after knowing it to turn back from the holy commandments handed down to them."
How is Calvin's position heretical, praytell. People at my Church (Calvinists of course) were telling me how Arminianism is absolutely wrong and Calvin was right. Please do explain it to me that I may relay the good message.
In what seems like an alternative to your text, John in his first epistle says:
6If we claim to have fellowship with him yet walk in the darkness, we lie and do not live by the truth. 7But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus, his Son, purifies us from all[2] sin.
And again:
1 John 3
9No one who is born of God will continue to sin, because God's seed remains in him; he cannot go on sinning, because he has been born of God. 10This is how we know who the children of God are and who the children of the devil are: Anyone who does not do what is right is not a child of God; nor is anyone who does not love his brother.
You can see how Arminianism is defeated in these texts, although I do wonder why the author warns us that "No one who is born of God will continue to sin", for we have all fallen short.
Also, be careful what you mean by slave. At the end John's gospel Jesus says to the apostles something like "I no longer call you slaves but my friends." Paul's use as a slave to Christ and slave to righteousness would then mean that Paul submitted to God, not God made him submit. "Be free, yet without using freedom as a pretext for evil, but as slaves of God."
Well, when I use the word, people here tell me "a slave is a slave is a slave".. Here is the text:
15What then? Shall we sin because we are not under law but under grace? By no means! 16Don't you know that when you offer yourselves to someone to obey him as slaves, you are slaves to the one whom you obey--whether you are slaves to sin, which leads to death, or to obedience, which leads to righteousness? 17But thanks be to God that, though you used to be slaves to sin, you wholeheartedly obeyed the form of teaching to which you were entrusted. 18You have been set free from sin and have become slaves to righteousness.
19I put this in human terms because you are weak in your natural selves. Just as you used to offer the parts of your body in slavery to impurity and to ever-increasing wickedness, so now offer them in slavery to righteousness leading to holiness. 20When you were slaves to sin, you were free from the control of righteousness. 21What benefit did you reap at that time from the things you are now ashamed of? Those things result in death!
22But now that you have been set free from sin and have become slaves to God, the benefit you reap leads to holiness, and the result is eternal life.