AG STUDY GUIDE FINAL - The Forerunner

to be doing an apologetic for the things that we believe, we never need to lose the
perspective that God is God and He can do what He wants to do. And who are we to
question His ways and His sovereign choices?
Dr. Walter Bowie – Where do you get the standard, where do you stand to get a
standard by which you measure God by, you see? He Himself is the standard. And He
does what He pleases and only what He pleases.
Dr. Stephen Mansfield – The truth is that God is God and He can do whatever He
wants. His job description is to do whatever pleases Him. That’s how He makes
decisions; that’s how He conducts Himself – according to His own good pleasure, as
Scripture says. Now that’s good news to the believer, but it’s bad news to those who are
rebelling against God.
Given the theological climate of the time, the Arminian party had no choice but to deal
with the doctrine of election. As we’ve seen, the Remonstrants insisted that the
individual’s response to God’s offer of salvation helped spark their spiritual
resurrection; their “born again” experience. But at the same time they acknowledged the
clear Biblical teaching that God chooses who will be saved. And so they devised a way
to supposedly reconcile the obvious tension between these two concepts. According to
the Arminian party’s formulation, God looks down from the corridors of time and
foresaw those who would choose Him and then ratified their choice by electing them.
Therefore election, to the Arminians was “conditional” based upon man’s proper
reaction.
Quoting again from the Articles of Faith of the National Association of Free Will
Baptists,
“God determined from the beginning to save all who should comply with the
conditions of salvation. Hence by faith in Christ men become His elect.” ~ Articles
of Faith of the National Association of Free Will Baptists, Article IX
This was, according to the Synod of Dort, pure Pelagianism. In their official
denunciation of the Remonstrants they wrote;
“For this does away with all effective functioning of God's grace in our conversion
and subjects the activity of Almighty God to the will of man; it is contrary to the
apostles, who teach that we believe by virtue of the effective working of God's mighty
strength (Eph. 1:19), and that God fulfills the undeserved good will of His kindness
and the work of faith in us with power (2 Thess. 1:11), and likewise that His divine
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