It has been our purpose for a long time to discuss the subjects of God's sovereignty and man's responsibility. The two subjects are often set in opposition to each other, as though they were mutually contradictory, rather than complimentary. Both are true, and they are found side by side in the Word of God. Parties and sects have been formed around each subject, while much heat and little light have been generated on both sides.
A stormy controversy arose in the latter part of the sixteenth century between the followers of John Calvin (1509-1564) and Jacobus Arminius, whose real name was Jacob Harmensen, or Hermansz (1560-1609). The battle between Calvinists and Arminians is still going on.
Calvin saw and taught the total ruin of man—that since Adam fell, all his posterity were born in sin and possessed a will opposed to God. Thus, Calvinism taught that mankind was hopelessly lost unless God stepped in and saved some, but that this He did, first by His own sovereign choice in a past eternity and then by giving them faith in Christ when they were living on the earth.
Arminius denied that man was beyond the power to help himself and contended that he could by exercising his own free will improve himself, and that at least he had the power to accept the good and refuse the evil, to exercise faith in Christ or to reject Him. This is generally termed the doctrine of "free will." Whether Arminius realized it or not, his doctrine had much of the Pelagian error in it. Let us consider Pelagius and his doctrine.