The history of the Calvinist–Arminian debate begins in the early 17th century in the Netherlands with a Christian theological dispute between the followers of John Calvin and Jacobus Arminius and continues today among some Protestants, particularly evangelicals. The debate centers around soteriology (the study of salvation) and includes disputes about total depravity, predestination, and atonement. While the debate was given its Calvinist–Arminian form in the 17th century, issues central to the debate have been discussed in Christianity in some form since Augustine of Hippo's disputes with the Pelagians in the 5th century.
Theological background Augustine and Pelagius
Pelagius was a British monk who journeyed to Rome around 400 A.D. and was appalled at what he perceived as the improper behavior within churches. To combat this lack of holiness, he preached a Gospel that began with justification through faith alone (it was actually Pelagius, not Martin Luther, who first added the word alone to Paul's phrase in Ephesians 2:8)Pawson, David Once Saved, Always Saved? (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1996) p. 89. but finished through human effort and morality. He had read Augustine's Confessions and believed it to be a fatalistic and pessimistic view of human nature. Pelagius's followers, including Caelestius, went further than their teacher and removed justification through faith, setting up the morality- and works-based salvation known as Pelagianism. The only historical evidence of the teachings of Pelagius or his followers is found through the writings of his two strongest opponents—Augustine and Jerome.
In response to Pelagius, Augustine adopted a theological system that included not only original sin (which Pelagius denied), but also a form of predestination. Some authors maintain that Augustine taught the doctrines of limited atonement and of irresistible grace, later associated with classic Calvinism; however, others insist that Augustine's writings conflict with these doctrines. Critics maintain that part of Augustinian soteriology may have stemmed from his expertise in Greek philosophy, particularly Platonism and Manichaeism, which maintained a high view of a man's spirit and low view of a man's body.Pawson, p. 91. Against the Pelagian notion that man can do everything right, he taught that man could do little right. Thus, he reasoned, man cannot even accept the offer of salvation—it must be God who chooses for himself individuals to bring to salvation.
A group of Italian bishops defended the Pelagian view against the Augustinian concept of predestination but was rejected by the Council of Ephesus in 431. Later a monastic movement in southern Gaul (modern-day France) also sought to explain predestination in light of God's foreknowledge, but a flurry of writings from Augustine (Grace and Free Will, Correction and Grace, The Predestination of the Saints and The Gift of Perseverance) helped maintain the papal authority of his doctrines.
Semi-Pelagianism and Semi-Augustinianism After the death of Augustine, a more moderate form of Pelagianism persisted, which claimed that man's faith was an act of free will unassisted by previous internal grace. The Second Council of Orange (529)Second Council of Orange text: http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/basis/orange.txt. was convened to address whether this moderate form of semi-Pelagianism could be affirmed, or if the doctrines of Augustine were to be affirmed.
The determination of the Council could be considered "semi-Augustinian".Francis Oakley. "The Medieval Experience: Foundations of Western Cultural Singularity", University of Toronto Press, 1 January 1988, p. 64.Don Thorsen. "An Exploration of Christian Theology", Baker Books, 2007, 20.3.4. It defined that faith, though a free act, resulted (even in its beginnings) from the grace of God, enlightening the human mind and enabling belief.Cf. Second Council of Orange, ch. 5–7; H. J. Denzinger. Enchiridion Symbolorum et Definitionum, p. 375–377.Cross, F. L., ed. The Oxford dictionary of the Christian church. New York: Oxford University Press. 2005. However, it also denied strict predestination, stating "We not only do not believe that any are foreordained to evil by the power of God, but even state with utter abhorrence that if there are those who want to believe so evil a thing, they are anathema." The document received papal sanction.
Calvinist Reformers used the Council's canons to demonstrate that their formulations of original sin and depravity had already been taught much earlier in the church. Arminian theologians also refer to the Council of Orange as a historical document that strongly affirms man's depravity and God's prevenient grace but does not present grace as irresistible or adhere to a strictly Augustinian view of predestination.
Middle Ages
Augustine's teaching on divine grace was considered a touchstone of orthodoxy within the western church throughout the Middle Ages. Nevertheless, within an Augustinian context, theologians continued to debate the precise nature of God and man's participation in salvation, as well as attempting to work out a place for the church's emerging system of sacraments in the overall scheme of salvation.
Thomas Aquinas, the most influential Catholic theologian of the Middle Ages, taught that, from man's fallen state, there were three steps to salvation: Infusion of grace (infusio gratiae) – God infuses grace into the human soul – the Christian now has faith and, with it, the ability to do good – this step is entirely God's work and is not done by man, and once a man has faith, he can never entirely lose it – however, faith alone is not enough for salvation; Faith formed by charity (fides caritate formata) – with man's free will restored, man must now do his best to do good works in order to have a faith formed by charity; and then; Condign merit (meritum de condigno) – God then judges and awards eternal life on the basis of these good works which Aquinas called man's condign merit.
Aquinas believed that by this system, he had reconciled Ephesians 2:8 ("By grace are ye saved through faith, and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God") and James 2:20 ("faith without works is dead") and 2:24 ("by works a man is justified and not by faith only"), and had provided an exposition of the Bible's teaching on salvation compatible with Augustine's teachings.
A second stream of medieval thought, commonly held by the Ockhamists, rejected Aquinas’ system as destroying man's free will. The Ockhamists argued that if a man loved God simply because of "infused grace", then man did not love God freely. They argued that before a man received an infusion of grace, man must do his best in a state of nature (i.e. based on man's reason and inborn moral sense). They argued that just as God awards eternal life on the basis of man's condign merit for doing his best to do good works after receiving faith as a gift from God, so too, the original infusion of grace was given to man on the basis of "congruent merit", a reward for man's doing his best in a state of nature. (Unlike condign merit, which is fully deserved by man, congruent merit is not fully deserved and includes a measure of grace on God's part. Congruent merit is therefore also sometimes called "semi-merit". According to the Ockhamists, a gracious God awards an individual with congruent merit when he or she does the best that he or she is able to do.)
Aquinas’ followers, commonly referred to as the Thomists, accused the Ockhamists of Pelagianism for basing the infusion of grace on man's works. The Ockhamists defended themselves from charges of Pelagianism by arguing that, in the Ockhamist system, God was not bound to award the infusion of grace on the basis of congruent merit; rather, God's decision to award the infusion of grace on the basis of congruent merit was an entirely gracious act on God's part.
Luther's condemnation of "justification by works" clearly condemned Ockhamism. Some proponents of ecumenism argue that the Thomist view of salvation is not opposed to Luther's view of grace, and, since Ockhamism was rejected as semi-Pelagian by the Catholic Church at the Council of Trent, theology of salvation need not pose a bar to Protestant-Catholic reunion. (The major streams of modern Catholic thought on the theology of salvation are Thomism and Molinism, a theology developed by Jesuit theologian Luis Molina in the 16th century and also held today by some Protestants such as William Lane Craig and Alvin Plantinga.)
However, since the Catholic Church's rejection of Jansenism in the bull Unigenitus (1713), it has been clear that Calvinism could not be accommodated within Catholicism. Arminianism, on the other hand, while it might not square entirely with Catholic theologies of salvation, probably could be accommodated within the Catholic Church, a fact which Arminianism's Protestant opponents have often pointed out. (Augustus Toplady, for example, famously claimed that Arminianism was the "Road to Rome.")
Martin Luther and Erasmus of Rotterdam
Martin Luther was an Augustinian friar in Erfurt. In his Disputation Against Scholastic Theology of 4 September 1517, Luther entered into the medieval debate between the Thomists and the Ockhamists by attacking the Ockhamist position and arguing that man by nature lacks the ability to do good that the Ockhamists asserted he had (and thus denying that man could do anything to deserve congruent merit). Modern scholars disagree about whether Luther in fact intended to criticize all scholastics in this Disputation or if he was concerned only with the Ockhamists. Arguing in favor of a broader interpretation is the fact that Luther went on to criticize the use of Aristotle in theology (Aristotle was the basis of Thomist as well as Ockhamist theology). If this is the case, it is likely that Luther saw Aquinas' fides caritate formata as merely a more cautious form of Pelagianism (or as semi-Pelagianism).
Luther continued to defend these views. In 1520, Pope Leo X issued the papal bull Exsurge Domine, which condemned a position which Luther had maintained at the 1518 Heidelberg Disputation, namely that "After the Fall free will is something in name only and when it does what is in it, it sins mortally." Luther subsequently defended the proposition in his Defense and Explanation of All the Articles Unjustly Condemned by the Roman Bull of Leo X (1520), in the process stating that "free will is really a fiction...with no reality, because it is in no man's power to plan any evil or good. As the article of John Wycliffe, condemned at the Council of Constance, teaches: everything takes place by absolute necessity."
Erasmus, though sympathetic to Luther at first, reacted negatively to what he saw as Luther's determinism. In his De libero arbitrio diatribe sive collatio (A Disquisition on Freedom of the Will) (1524), Erasmus caricatures the limitations of free will that he saw Luther espousing. Though at times in the diatribe, Erasmus sounds like an Ockhamist, for the most part he attempts to espouse a middle course between grace and free will, attempting to avoid on the one hand the errors of the Pelagians and the Ockhamists, and on the other hand, the "Manichaean" error of Luther and other strict Augustinians.
Luther responded with his De Servo Arbitrio (On the Bondage of the Will) (1525) in which he argues that man was not free to do good. Rather, man's fallen nature is in bondage to sin and to Satan, and man can only do evil. The only way an individual can be saved is if God freely chooses to give that person the gift of faith. Luther's position in On the Bondage of the Will became the position adopted by the Protestant movement.
Jacobus Arminius and the Synod of Dort