Calvinism vs Arminianism: The Five Points Side by Side

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Calvinists believe God chose before creation who will be saved, and that his grace always brings them to faith and keeps them there. Arminians believe God’s grace enables anyone to believe, that people can refuse it and, in most Arminian churches, that a believer can fall away. Both teach salvation by grace through faith in Christ.

The argument began in 1610 and has divided churches ever since, but it is an argument inside one family. Both sides say no sinner turns to God unless grace goes first. Both hold on to the same promise Jesus made about his sheep, “no one will snatch them out of my hand” (John 10:28), and each side finds its comfort there.

Our free tool, Compare Christian Denominations, sets any two of 23 churches side by side on 55 questions.

Question	Calvinism	Arminianism
Named after	John Calvin (1509–1564), reformer at Geneva	Jacobus Arminius (1560–1609), professor at Leiden
Defining document	Canons of Dort (1618–19)	The Remonstrance, five articles (1610)
Can a sinner turn to God unaided?	No: born “unfit for any saving good”	No: grace must go first, though Dort judged this view of sin too mild
Election	Unconditional: not based on foreseen faith	Conditional: God chose those who would believe and persevere
Christ’s death	Enough for the whole world; effective for the elect	For every person; received only by believers
Grace	Always brings the elect to faith	Can be resisted
Can a believer fall away finally?	No	Left open in 1610; Wesley and later Arminians say yes
Churches	Reformed, Presbyterian (PCA, OPC), many Baptists	Methodists, Pentecostals, Free Will Baptists
Verses often cited	Romans 9, Ephesians 1, John 6:44, John 10:28	John 3:16, 1 Timothy 2:4, 2 Peter 3:9, Hebrews 6:4–6, John 10:28

Calvin came first, born at Noyon in France in 1509. He worked at Geneva from 1536 until the city expelled him in 1538, and again from 1541 until his death there on May 27, 1564. Arminius was born in the Netherlands in 1560, four years before Calvin died. He studied at Geneva under Theodore Beza, Calvin’s successor there, and then became a minister at Amsterdam in 1588 and professor of theology at Leiden in 1603. The church historian Philip Schaff records that Arminius began as a strict Calvinist and changed his mind while defending Calvinist teaching against one of its critics.

Arminius died in 1609, before the dispute was settled. The next year forty-six ministers who shared his views laid five articles, the Remonstrance, before the representatives of Holland and West Friesland. Then the States-General convened a national synod at Dordrecht (Dort in English), which met from November 13, 1618, to May 9, 1619, with twenty-six delegates from eight other countries beside the Dutch. Its judgment, the Canons of Dort, rejected the five articles one by one, and about two hundred Arminian ministers were removed from their posts.

So when this debate speaks of “Calvinism,” it means the Reformed answer given at Dort, fifty-four years after Calvin’s death, rather than a list Calvin wrote himself. The Canons have four heads of doctrine, with the third and fourth combined, arranged to answer the Remonstrance’s five articles. The acronym TULIP, which rearranges those answers into Total depravity, Unconditional election, Limited atonement, Irresistible grace and Perseverance of the saints, came much later. Its earliest known use is a lecture of about 1905 by the Presbyterian minister Cleland McAfee, recalled in 1913 by a writer in The New Outlook: “Dr. McAfee made use of the word Tulip, which, possessing five letters, lends itself nicely to the subject in hand.”

Arminians do not teach that people can save themselves or take the first step toward God. The Remonstrance says that a fallen person “can of and by himself neither think, will, nor do any thing that is truly good,” and must be born again by the Holy Spirit. The Canons of Dort say that all people are born “unfit for any saving good, inclined to evil, dead in their sins, and slaves to sin.” And John Wesley said that on original sin and justification by faith “there is not a hair’s breadth difference between Mr. Wesley and Mr. Whitefield,” his Calvinist fellow preacher.

The Synod of Dort did not think the agreement went so deep. The Christian Reformed Church’s introduction to the Canons says that in the Remonstrance “and in later more explicit writings” the Arminians taught “limited human depravity.” The Canons condemn those who teach that unregenerate humanity is “not strictly or totally dead in sin or deprived of all capacity for spiritual good.” Calvinists hold that God must give new life to a dead will before it can believe.

Arminians hold that God gives every person a grace that goes before faith and frees the will to respond. The Remonstrance calls it “prevenient or assisting, awakening, following and cooperative grace.” The United Methodist Articles of Religion call it the grace of God “preventing us,” that is, going before us.

Wesley counted three disputes, treating the reach of Christ’s death as part of predestination, and thought all three came down to one: “Is predestination absolute or conditional?” If it is absolute, he argued, the rest follows.

Both sides believe in predestination: that God chose people for salvation before the world began. Both read Paul saying that God “chose us in him before the foundation of the world” and “predestined us for adoption” (Ephesians 1:4–5). Where they part is over the ground of that choice.

The first article of the Remonstrance says God decreed to save “those who, through the grace of the Holy Ghost, shall believe on this his Son Jesus, and shall persevere in this faith … even to the end.” So in the Remonstrance God’s choice rests on his foreknowledge of who will believe.

The Canons of Dort answer that election took place “not on the basis of foreseen faith” but “for the purpose of faith,” so that faith, holiness and eternal life flow from election as its fruit. The Westminster Confession, held by the Presbyterian Church in America and the Orthodox Presbyterian Church, says the same: God chose “without any foresight of faith, or good works.” Arminians set against this the verses that speak of God’s will for everyone, such as 1 Timothy 2:4, where God “desires all people to be saved.”

The Remonstrance says that Jesus Christ “died for all men and for every man,” winning forgiveness for them all, “yet that no one actually enjoys this forgiveness of sins except the believer.” It cites John 3:16 and 1 John 2:2, where Christ is the propitiation “not for ours only but also for the sins of the whole world.”

The Canons of Dort grant that Christ’s death is “of infinite value and worth, more than sufficient to atone for the sins of the whole world.” What they deny is that God intended it to redeem everyone alike. It was God’s will, they say, that Christ “should effectively redeem from every people, tribe, nation, and language all those and only those who were chosen from eternity to salvation.” This is the L in TULIP, “limited atonement,” and the limit it speaks of is on God’s purpose in the cross, not on its worth. So the question between the two sides is whether the cross secured salvation for particular people or opened it to everyone on condition of faith.

The fourth article of the Remonstrance ascribes every good thing in a Christian to grace, then adds: “it is not irresistible, inasmuch as it is written concerning many, that they have resisted the Holy Ghost.” It points to Stephen’s words: “you always resist the Holy Spirit” (Acts 7:51).

The Canons reply that all those in whom God works regeneration “are certainly, unfailingly, and effectively reborn and do actually believe.” They add at once that this grace “does not act in people as if they were blocks and stones” and does not force a reluctant will. Calvinists hear this in Jesus’ words: “No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him” (John 6:44). Arminians accept those words too, and hold that the Father’s drawing reaches everyone and can be refused.

On this point the first Arminians were least sure of themselves. The fifth article of the Remonstrance says that believers have full power through grace to resist sin. Whether they could still turn away by their own negligence, the article says, “must be more particularly determined out of the Holy Scripture, before we ourselves can teach it with the full persuasion of our minds.”

The Canons have no such doubt: a believer left to himself would fall, they say, but “with respect to God it cannot possibly happen,” because God’s plan, promise and calling cannot change. The Westminster Confession teaches that those God has called “can neither totally nor finally fall away from the state of grace.” Yet both sides claim Jesus’ promise about his sheep, “no one will snatch them out of my hand” (John 10:28). The Canons quote it, and the Remonstrance cites it too (“Neither shall any man pluck them out of my hand”), for believers who stay ready for the fight.

Later Arminians settled the question the other way, and their churches say so plainly. A true believer, Wesley wrote, “may fall, not only foully, but finally, so as to perish for ever.” The Assemblies of God “disapproves of the unconditional security position which holds that it is impossible for a person once saved to be lost.” The Free Will Baptist Treatise calls a believer’s final salvation “neither determined nor certain.” Arminians point to the warning of Hebrews 6:4–6 about those “who have once been enlightened” and “then have fallen away.” The popular phrase “once saved, always saved” names the view that a true believer cannot finally be lost.

Calvinism is the confessed teaching of the Reformed and Presbyterian churches. The Christian Reformed Church and the Reformed Church in America keep the Canons of Dort among their confessions, and the Presbyterian Church in America and the Orthodox Presbyterian Church hold the Westminster Confession, which teaches the same doctrine of election and perseverance.

On the Arminian side, Schaff notes that the Wesley brothers were Arminians and George Whitefield a Calvinist, and that they separated over predestination. Methodist churches keep Wesley’s teaching, and Pentecostal churches such as the Assemblies of God hold the Arminian view of grace and perseverance.

Are Baptists Calvinist or Arminian?

There are both kinds, and there have been from the start. Schaff describes the seventeenth-century English Baptists as two streams: Particular Baptists, who were Calvinist, and General Baptists, who rejected unconditional election and the perseverance of the saints and held “the possibility of falling from grace.” Today the Free Will Baptists hold the Arminian view.

The Southern Baptist Convention’s Baptist Faith and Message (2000) leaves room for both. It affirms election as “the gracious purpose of God,” adds that it is “consistent with the free agency of man,” and teaches that “All true believers endure to the end,” without saying whether election rests on foreseen faith.

Lutherans hold neither position

Lutherans agree with Calvinists that nothing in us causes God’s election. The Formula of Concord says predestination “extends only over the godly, beloved children of God, being a cause of their salvation.” But it denies that God’s foreknowledge causes anyone’s ruin, “for which they themselves are responsible,” and it cites 2 Peter 3:9 and 1 John 2:2 for God’s will that all be saved. On the fifth point Lutherans stand with the Arminians: the Formula rejects the teaching that “faith and the indwelling of the Holy Ghost are not lost by wilful sin.” So Lutherans teach unconditional election, a grace meant for all and a faith that can be lost, and that combination fits neither system.

The Canons of Dort answer objections with Romans 9: “So then it depends not on human will or exertion, but on God, who has mercy” (Romans 9:16). For Calvinists that chapter, with its potter and clay, teaches God’s free choice of individuals. Many Arminian interpreters read it as Paul’s account of how God chooses a people, Israel and then the church of Jews and Gentiles, with individuals sharing in that election by faith. Brian Abasciano argued this in 2006 against Thomas Schreiner’s case for individual election.

Arminians begin with texts about God’s will for everyone, such as John 3:16 and 2 Peter 3:9, where the Lord is “not wishing that any should perish, but that all should reach repentance.” The Canons agree that “all who are called through the gospel are called earnestly,” and Calvinists hold that election explains why some of those called believe.

Neither system thinks both can be right, since each answers Wesley’s question, absolute or conditional, the opposite way. Yet some on both sides have treated the dispute as one between fellow believers. Charles Simeon, a young Cambridge clergyman who was sometimes called a Calvinist, described one such conversation in the preface to his sermon outlines, Horae Homileticae. He named neither man, and he placed the talk “about three or four years after he was ordained.” It probably took place at the meeting Wesley recorded in his journal on December 20, 1784, with “Mr. Simeon,” a Fellow of King’s College.

Simeon opened by saying: “Sir, I understand that you are called an Arminian; and I have been sometimes called a Calvinist; and therefore I suppose we are to draw daggers.” He asked whether the older man would ever have turned to God unless God had first put it in his heart, whether he looked for salvation solely through Christ, and whether God must uphold him every moment like an infant in its mother’s arms. To every question the answer was yes. Simeon replied: “Then, Sir, with your leave, I will put up my dagger again; for this is all my Calvinism,” and proposed that they “cordially unite in those things wherein we agree.” By Simeon’s account the two had no further connection, but the older man “retained an unfeigned regard for his young inquirer” until his death.

• The Arminian Connection: Denominations, Beliefs, and Comparison
• Calvinism vs Lutheranism: The Lord’s Supper, Predestination and Other Differences
• Baptist vs. Reformed Beliefs
• Methodists vs Baptists

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