Comments on rejections of the Canons of Dordt?

Various possibilities are involved when Arminians speak of election. They may have in mind a general and indefinite election, which does not refer to certain definite persons, but to men in general and to certain indefinite persons, although it does not mention men, but consists in election of certain conditions. The insidiousness of this error is that it allows Arminians to say that God’s election is sure. But they mean sure in the sense that the reward of eternal life is surely attached to the fulfillment of necessary conditions.

Alternatively, Arminians may also have in mind a particular and definite election, which even speaks of God’s choosing definite persons in distinction from others. But these definite persons are those whom God foresaw as meeting the conditions of salvation.

The Arminian conception of election is a doctrinal maze through which one finds his way with difficulty. Even particular and definite election—although in some instances it can be complete (it ends in eternal life), irrevocable (not recalled at the last moment), decisive (you are one of God’s saved ones), and absolute (not uncertain and conditional)—could be incomplete (you never reach the goal), revocable (you end up a reprobate), nondecisive (it determines nothing concerning your final state), and conditional (the decision still remains in your hands).

Arminians do not explain how in any real sense such an election can be particular and definite. They do not, because they cannot. The only election they really know is general and indefinite, which is for that reason no election whatsoever. With the above scheme, Arminians are able to speak of one election unto faith—which has a Reformed sound—and of another election unto salvation. The result is that Arminians can play such doctrinal games that they actually end by maintaining that although a man was chosen unto justifying faith, that is, faith by which he is adjudged righteous before God in Christ, nevertheless this does not mean that he will be among the saved on the day of judgment. This is an election unto justifying faith without being a decisive election unto salvation.

By this time one may well say that any resemblance between Arminian teaching and the scriptural teaching of election is strictly coincidental. So thoroughly do Arminians corrupt the true doctrine of election in this scheme that it is neither necessary nor possible to quote Scripture to refute them. One is well-nigh at a loss as to where he must begin his criticism.

Evidently the fathers felt this and saw that once this clever scheme is set forth in plain language, it is so obviously false that no argument is necessary. They out rightly condemn it as “a fancy of men’s minds.” They boldly say that it is invented “regardless of the Scriptures.” When the Arminian corruption of the doctrine of election is preached or underlies the preaching, you hear not the word of God, but the word of man.