Foreseen Faith and the Unbiblical Circular Reasoning of Arminians

Almost without exception when I present John 6:37 (and 6:63, 65) to a professing Arminian they simply ignore it and change the subject, but the other day I encountered one of those rare exceptions. As you know in the passage Jesus declares, "All those the Father gives to me will come to me." The Arminian claimed the meaning was that all those the Father FORESAW would come to faith in Jesus, the Father gave to Jesus that they might come to faith in him. Ummm! Not only is this meaning not there and arbitrarily imported into the text but you can, perhaps, find no better example of circular reasoning.

How is this circular reasoning? All those the Father gives to Jesus will infallibly come to faith in him . God's giving them to Jesus precedes their coming to faith in him and yet the Arminian says it is based on something that happens after God gives them to Jesus. God is giving them to Jesus now based on something that will infallibly happen in the future? Consider that if election is based on foreseen faith then he already knew who would and would not believe even before God created us and it could not be otherwise. Why would God create people he knew with certainty would go to hell? Contradicts the Arminian teaching on free will ... So if the future is certain before it happens then isn't based on foreseen faith at all but something more like fate.

One other interpretation I have run into from an Arminian on John 6:37 was that "come to me" is not referring to faith at all but is the universal prevenient grace given to all people ... of course this ignores the immediate context of the entire passage which is faith ... and even more fatal to this interpretation is that is fails to take into account the rest of the verse which states that these people who come to him are the same people who Jesus will raise up at the last day. "...and those who come to me I will raise up on the last day."

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Fri, 08/26/2016 - 13:33 -- john_hendryx

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