Clark Quick Quote

OK, one good quote to embarrass my Arminian friends (and others similarly deluded) deserves another.  It’s been some time since I’ve read one of Clark’s commentaries, but they are excellent and the insights he provides are often profound and unflinching.  What more could anyone want in a commentary?  Here is part of Clark’s commentary of 2 Thessalonians 2:11, 12.

And for this reason God will send to them an activity [energy] of error so that they shall believe falsehood in order that all those who do not believe the truth but who take pleasure in injustice shall be condemned. 

…  Notice now that on those who do not care for truth, God sends an activity of error. The Arminians usually hold that God does not cause people to despise the truth nor does he purpose to condemn them for doing so. But this verse says, note carefully, that God plunges them into error in order that they shall be condemned. Non-calvinists will say that God permits, but does not cause, unbelief. Calvin denounces the idea of a permissive will. “Here they recur to the distinction between will and permission, and insist that God permits the destruction of the impious, but does not will it. But what reason shall we assign for his permitting it, but because it is his will?” (Institutes, III, xxiii, 8).

Aside from what Calvin said, one should note that the Arminians fail in their attempt to relieve God of responsibility for evil and its retribution. Suppose a lifeguard at a poll or at the beach sees a little child drowning. Can he sit still in his high chair, refuse to rescue the child, and escape responsibility on the ground that he merely permitted the child to drown? Let the Arminians tell that to the parents, and to the judge! – (First and Second Thessalonians, 98 – 99. Also see “Determinism and Responsibility”).

Clark Quick Quote

“If regeneration were a reward for a previous act of faith by our Arminian free will, God could not know ahead of time whom he could save.  The Arminians say God could look ahead and see who would freely accept Christ.  But if this “looking ahead” were accurate, and unchangeable, the man’s will would not be free.  Some factor in the dim distant past would have had to determine the will so that it could not change.  If it was not God who determined the act of faith, then there must be some power beyond God’s control that did so. For reasons such as these Paul wrote ‘God chose you from the beginning.'”  –  Clark’s commentary on First and Second Thessalonians