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If salvation depended upon man, why would there be no hope for anyone to be saved? |
The following chart contrasts the main beliefs of Calvinism and Arminianism regarding man's fallen nature.
| MAN'S NATURE AND NATURAL ABILITY | |
| Arminianism - Human Ability: Free-Will | Calvinism - Human Inability: Total Depravity |
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1. Fallen man has some good spiritual abilities. |
1. Fallen man has no good spiritual abilities; he is spiritually dead, blind, and deaf. |
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2. Man has a free will to choose good or evil. |
2. Man's will is not free, but is in bondage to his evil nature, sin, and Satan. He makes choices, but he always chooses sin. |
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3. The sinner has the ability to repent and believe in, turn to, and accept Christ as Savior, apart from God's regenerating grace. |
3. Only God's regenerating grace can cause the spiritually dead sinner to live spiritually and enable him to repent and believe. |
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4. Saving faith is the sinner's gift to God. |
4. Saving faith is God's gift to the sinner. |
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5. Man's choice is the crucial difference between those who are saved or lost. |
5. God's grace is the crucial difference between those who are saved or lost. |
The following scriptural references are examples which verify the truth of the five Calvinistic statements listed in the preceding chart.
1. Fallen man has no good spiritual abilities, he is spiritually dead, blind, and deaf (not "alive or able to help himself with his own supposed spiritual abilities," as Arminianism claims).
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But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die. - Genesis 2:17 But the natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God: for they are foolishness unto him: neither can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned. - I Corinthians 2:14 |
Behold, I was shapen in iniquity; and in sin did my mother conceive me. - Psalm 51:5 As it is written, There is none righteous, no, not one: - Romans 3:10-12 |
