My point in this already too-long entry is not how much Arminianism changed, but how incomplete their labors were. They said God hadn’t predestined and elected the way most earlier Protestant theologians understood Scripture to teach, but they didn’t say God couldn’t. In a nominally Christian culture, Arminianism may appear to be a satisfying explanation of the problem of evil—“God’s good; it’s our fault”. But as the acids of modernity have eaten away at more and more of the Bible’s teachings and even presuppositions about God, that answer is proving woefully insufficient to more radical critics. It appears merely like moving the wrinkle in the carpet. A backslidden United Methodist may be satisfied with such teaching, but a Deist, a Buddhist or an atheist would have no reasons to be. A. C. Grayling, Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens, Sam Harris and their like will not for a moment be satisfied with someone saying “Well, God could have made this world without suffering, but in order to be loved with dignity by free beings, He decided He must allow such sin and suffering as we experience.”
Really? Then hang being loved with dignity! Forget the whole experiment! It costs too much! Furthermore, what kind of God NEEDS to be worshipped? What kind of deity is this?!
And it’s this line of questioning that I think has quietly, deeply, perhaps subtly been re-shaping the field into one in which the half-measures of Arminianism are not even beginning to be satisfying. They are attractive to fewer and fewer people. Their adherents average age will grow even as their numbers shrink. They will be recruited mainly from the churched, and perhaps even those who’ve nurtured grievances against God, for allowing this or that to happen.
Reformed theology, on the other hand, teaches about a god who is GOD. The kind of objections that seem to motivate Arminianism are disallowed by the very presuppositions Calvinism understands the Bible to teach about God. This God is sovereign and exercises His sovereignty. This God is centered on Himself. And this God is understood to be morally good in being so Self-centered. In fact, it would be evil, wrong, deceptive for Him to be centered on anything other than His own glory. There is no apology about this.
I highly suggest you read all ten posts. Here are links:
Where'd all these Calvinists come from? 10 of 10
Where'd all these Calvinists come from? 9 of 10
Where'd all these Calvinists come from? 8 of 10
Where'd all these Calvinists come from? 7 of 10
Where'd all these Calvinists come from? 6 of 10
Where'd all these Calvinists come from? 5 of 10
Where'd all these Calvinists come from? 4 of 10
Where'd all these Calvinists come from? 3 of 10
Where'd all these Calvinists come from? 2 of 10
Where'd all these Calvinists come from? 1 of 10
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