The Robot, the Puppet, and the Straw Man All Walk into a Grocery Store
In theological debates, Arminians are infamous for inventing untenable characters and circumstances, and then project them on Reformed believers. The most familiar one is the projection that claims Reformed theology makes everyone a robot or a puppet on a string. What knocks down this straw man argument is the truth that Reformed theology teaches: God has given man a will, and man is fully responsible for his sin and guilt.
The human will is the place of our decision-making. We make decisions all day, everyday. Where Arminians are confused, or authoring confusion, is in their following Erasmus, Martin Luther’s humanist rival. Erasmus wrote a book titled, “The Freedom of the Will.” Luther replied with a book of his own, “The Bondage of the Will.”
When God gave Adam his will to make decisions, the first man’s will was unhindered by sin. Adam’s will was free…but not from the influence of evil. Satan offered temptation, an outside pressure for Adam to deviate from God’s will, which was the good and true influence that guided Adam and Eve.
With the fall of man into sin, an “informed” choice of the will was made to rebel against God (Gen 3). The same choice positioned Adam in full subjection to the will of Satan. In other words, Adam became a slave of Satan, a slave of sin (Rom 6:6). Whereas, a robot and a puppet are void of a will of their own, a slave has a will of his own, but he is constrained by the influence of another’s will upon his own.
I was once engaged by an Arminian, who presented me with a grocery store scenario. He wrote, “If there were a lottery for getting into a grocery store, what purpose does it serve to stand in the parking lot yelling, ‘Not everybody gets to go in! You might not make it! You have to be chosen!”
In this straw man analogy, he wants the grocery store to represent salvation/church/heaven. The one who yells is the Reformed Christian preacher. The trio of messages is the Gospel. All of it is exacerbated distortion but let us consider his argument.
First, we do not consider salvation a lottery. Lotteries are chance opportunities, with near impossible odds of winning, established by corrupt governments. What my Arminian acquaintance loathes is God’s sovereign predestination (Rom 8:29; Eph 1:4–5). Arminians, when pressed, cannot deny the Bible doctrines of election and reprobation because they are so well-attested in Scripture (Rom 9). Notice how God’s election of a people for His own possession in eternity past is depicted as a lottery of random chance by the Arminian.
Second, besides requiring a lottery to get into heaven, the Arminian sets up another unreasonable scene. Arminians claim it is futile for Reformed pastors to preach the Gospel (if only the elect are saved). So, my acquaintance caricatures the Reformed preacher as a man outside the church (grocery store), yelling at people in the parking lot.
Portraying a man of God preaching the Word of God as a lunatic yelling impossible non-sense is another straw man. The Bible’s message of salvation is consistent, unlike the Arminian gospel, which is no gospel at all. The Gospel is not a negative message, as my acquaintance has insinuated with, “Not everyone gets in! You might not make it! You have to be chosen!” If we were to scrutinize each of these statements, we must admit they are all biblical truth, but the Reformed preacher is not prone to assault people with truth.
The best retort for this type of Arminian straw man argumentation is the Gospel of Jesus Christ. God created everything, but before creation, God knew everything, including every creature He would create (Gen 1–2; Rom 8:29). Of humanity, the pinnacle of His creation, destined to fall into sin (Gen 3), God loved a people and gave them to His Son (Eph 1:4–5). At the appointed time in the history of man, God sent His Son into the world (Jn 3:16) to save His people from their sins (Mt 1:21).
Christ, the Son, loved His people (Eph 5:25), laid down His life for them (Jn 10:11, 15), by dying a cruel death on a cross, in the place of their deserved punishment (1 Pet 2:24). Christ crucified for His beloved people satisfied God’s just judgment and wrath against them (Rom 1:18), demonstrated God’s love for them (Rom 5:8), and opened the way for God to have mercy upon them (Rom 9:15).
God chose to have mercy on some, but not all. His choice is hidden in His eternal good pleasure, but it manifests throughout the Bible in two groups: saved and not saved (ie. Cain and Abel; Isaac and Ishmael; Jacob and Esau, etc.). Jesus’ death, burial, resurrection, ascension, and enthronement gave way for His sending the Holy Spirit to gather His beloved bride, the church, from every nation, tribe, and tongue (Rev 5:9).
Of the total number of God the Father’s chosen elect, for whom Christ died to save, not one is missing from the Lamb’s book of life (Rev 13:8; 17:8), nor from the reality of eternal life (Rom 8:35–39). All of this is good news, preached by a man of God, commanding all men everywhere to repent and believe this message (Acts 17:30).
The Arminian does not believe this message. Instead, he mocks God and this glorious salvation with straw man arguments, caricatures, ad hominem arguments, etc. The Arminian concocts his own man-centered gospel with the same Scriptural vocabulary but taught with very different meanings.
The Arminian hates God and His free choice in election. Instead, she claims choice for herself. The Arminian hates God and His sovereign free will to do as He pleases (Ps 115:3; 135:6). Instead, she claims free will for herself, despite slavery to sin and the devil. The Arminian hates God and His exclusive work of salvation (Ps 3:8; Jon 2:9; Rev 19:1). Instead, she claims that by her own free will decision, she decides who is saved.
In conclusion, we must warn all people to beware of the false gospel of the humanist-inspired Arminian. We must warn men of the tactics employed to win arguments but not to win souls. The Arminian deception is great in our time, for it appeals to the sinful flesh of people, and legion are its adherents.
Telling is my acquaintance’s desire to hide our debate from public view. His quote, taken from a private message, in which he wrote, “We could both make theological arguments back and forth and frankly I’d prefer to keep any argument away from the public eye.” Just as Jacobus Arminius notoriously played hide and seek, cat and mouse, with the church until his death, so his followers wish to stealthily deceive people, without the scrutiny of the public. Arminius was a shrewd and popular power-player, but in the end, the church deemed him a heretic in A.D. 1619, even as his adherents are, today.
David Norczyk
Spokane Valley, Washington
August 27, 2021
