Monday, February 9, 2026

Gregory of Nyssa’s Refutation of Manichaeism and the Problem of Eternal Evil in Orthodox Christianity

by Rev. William M. Brennan, TH.D.

Introduction

The struggle between early Christianity and Manichaeism was not merely a contest between rival religions but a profound metaphysical dispute concerning the nature of evil, matter, and the ultimate destiny of creation. Gregory of Nyssa, one of the Cappadocian Fathers and a central architect of Nicene orthodoxy, stands as one of the most philosophically rigorous opponents of Manichaean dualism. While Gregory unequivocally rejects Manichaeism’s doctrine of two eternal principles, his eschatological vision—particularly his insistence on the final abolition of evil—raises a critical question: did later orthodox Christianity, by affirming the eternal existence of hell and the everlasting exclusion of some creatures, unintentionally reintroduce a Manichaean structure at the level of outcome, if not at the level of origin?

Gregory of Nyssa (c. 335–395 CE) stands among the most authoritative theologians of the fourth century and occupies a central place within the pro-Nicene settlement of early Christianity. As one of the three Cappadocian Fathers—alongside Basil of Caesarea and Gregory of Nazianzus—he was instrumental in articulating and defending the theological grammar that secured the triumph of Nicene orthodoxy against Arianism, particularly in its doctrines of divine unity, Trinitarian relations, and the goodness of creation. His theological standing has never been seriously contested within the orthodox tradition; indeed, he is frequently honored in the Eastern Church as “the Father of Fathers,” a title reflecting both his doctrinal authority and his enduring influence on patristic theology. Notably, this unimpeachable orthodoxy coexists with Gregory’s explicit commitment to a universalist eschatology (apokatastasis), a position he defends not as speculative novelty but as the necessary consequence of Nicene metaphysics consistently applied. That Gregory could be simultaneously an ardent universalist and a chief architect of orthodoxy poses a significant challenge to later theological claims that universal restoration is inherently heterodox or implicitly Manichaean.

The choice of Gregory of Nyssa as the primary interlocutor for evaluating the relationship between Christianity and Manichaeism is especially significant when contrasted with the later dominance of Augustine of Hippo, whose eschatological vision would come to exercise far greater influence over Western theology. Augustine’s authority gradually eclipsed that of Gregory, particularly with respect to the doctrine of final punishment and the permanence of exclusion, marking a decisive departure from Gregory’s universalist horizon. This divergence is historically noteworthy given Augustine’s own intellectual biography.

Prior to his conversion to Christianity, Augustine spent nearly a decade as a committed adherent and teacher within the Manichaean community founded by Mani. While Augustine explicitly repudiated Manichaean metaphysics after his conversion, it is neither implausible nor historically irresponsible to suggest that elements of Manichaean eschatological structure—especially the notion of an eternal remainder irrevocably excluded from the good—continued to shape his imagination. The enduring influence of Augustine’s theology thus raises the possibility that, in rejecting Gregory’s vision of universal restoration, later orthodoxy inadvertently preserved in modified form a Manichaean pattern of finality, even while denying its metaphysical premises.

This essay argues that Gregory’s refutation of Manichaeism is not limited to its cosmological beginnings but extends decisively to its eschatological conclusions. In failing to heed this aspect of Gregory’s teaching, later orthodoxy posited an eternal persistence of evil that risks granting it a quasi-substantial and functionally ultimate status—precisely what Gregory labored to deny.

I. Manichaeism as Metaphysical Target

Mani (c. 216–276 CE) taught a radical metaphysical dualism in which Light and Darkness are co-eternal, uncreated principles locked in cosmic opposition. Evil, identified with matter and chaos, is not a privation or distortion of the good but a positive, ontological reality. Salvation, accordingly, consists in the extraction of divine Light from material entanglement and its return to the realm of Light, while Darkness remains eternally sealed and contained.¹

Gregory wrote in a late-fourth-century context in which Manichaeism was a well-known and actively opposed rival system. His polemic, however, is directed less at Mani as a historical figure than at the metaphysical coherence of dualism itself.

II. Gregory’s Ontology: Evil as Privation, Not Substance

Across his corpus, Gregory insists on a single, foundational metaphysical axiom: being is identical with the good, because all being derives from God, who alone truly is. Evil, therefore, cannot possess positive ontological status.

In On the Soul and the Resurrection, Gregory argues that evil is not a thing but a lack:

“That which is evil is not contemplated as existing in its own substance, but is a certain absence and privation of the good.”²

This claim functions as a direct refutation of Manichaean ontology. If evil had substance, it would necessarily derive from God (which is impossible) or exist independently of God (which would negate divine ultimacy). Either option collapses Christian monotheism.

III. The Eschatological Extension of Anti-Manichaean Logic

Crucially, Gregory does not confine this logic to the doctrine of creation; he extends it into eschatology. If evil is privation, it cannot be eternal, for eternity belongs only to what truly is. In The Great Catechism, Gregory states:

“For it is not reasonable to suppose that what had its beginning in time should be co-eternal with that which had no beginning.”³

Punishment, therefore, is medicinal and purgative, not retributive in an endless sense. Evil is permitted only insofar as it can be undone.

Gregory explicitly interprets First Epistle to the Corinthians 15:28—“that God may be all in all”—as a literal eschatological claim. Any eternal remainder of evil would contradict this vision, introducing a permanent duality into the final state of reality.

IV. Direct and Indirect Refutations of Manichaeism

A. Direct Critiques

Gregory explicitly rejects:

Two eternal principles
Matter as intrinsically evil
Evil as a substantive reality

These are unmistakably Manichaean positions, and Gregory treats them as live philosophical errors rather than distant heresies.⁴

B. Indirect (Structural) Critiques

More subtly, Gregory rejects any eschatology that stabilizes evil forever, even if it verbally denies dualism. His reasoning is clear: an eternally preserved evil, even as “privation,” functions metaphysically like a second principle.

As he notes in On the Soul and the Resurrection, what is wholly deprived of the good must eventually cease, since persistence itself is a mode of participation in being.⁵

V. The Departure of Later Orthodoxy

Later Latin and medieval orthodoxy—especially in the Augustinian tradition—retained Gregory’s ontology of evil as privation but abandoned his eschatological conclusions. By affirming the eternal existence of hell and the everlasting exclusion of some rational creatures, orthodoxy introduced:

An eternal dual outcome
A permanent “outside” to divine reconciliation
An everlasting state opposed to the good

While evil was still denied substantiality, it was granted eternal duration, which for Gregory would amount to a contradiction. Duration without end is not metaphysically neutral; it confers stability, persistence, and a functional ultimacy.

Thus, although orthodoxy avoids Manichaeism in its beginnings, it risks approximating it in its end.

VI. Gregory and the Charge of “Implicit Dualism”

Gregory’s position suggests a striking conclusion: an eternal hell is not merely pastorally severe but metaphysically incoherent. To posit an everlasting realm of exclusion is to grant evil an unending role within the divine economy, undermining the claim that God alone is ultimate.

In this sense, Gregory anticipates later covenant universalist arguments, not as speculative optimism but as a strict consequence of anti-Manichaean ontology consistently applied.

Conclusion

Gregory of Nyssa stands as one of Christianity’s most formidable opponents of Manichaeism precisely because he recognizes that the defeat of dualism requires more than a monotheistic account of origins. It requires an eschatology in which evil is not merely restrained or contained, but abolished.

By failing to follow Gregory’s logic to its eschatological conclusion, later orthodoxy preserved a final structure that mirrors Manichaeism in form, though not in metaphysical intent. Gregory’s enduring challenge to Christian theology is thus not whether evil is created, but whether it is allowed to last forever—and what that allowance ultimately implies.

Notes

Iain Gardner, Manichaean Texts from the Roman Empire (Cambridge, 2004).
Gregory of Nyssa, On the Soul and the Resurrection,
Gregory of Nyssa, The Great Catechism, ch. 26.
Jean Daniélou, From Glory to Glory: Texts from Gregory of Nyssa’s Mystical Writings (St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1995).
Morwenna Ludlow, Gregory of Nyssa, Ancient and (Post)Modern (Oxford University Press, 2007).

Thursday, January 22, 2026

The Death of the Unborn and Biblical Penology: Why “Life for Life” Applies in Principle

by Rev. William M. Brennan, TH.D.

Introduction

A central question in biblical ethics is whether Scripture treats unborn life as fully human life under God’s justice. If the unborn child is truly a human person, then the destruction of that life cannot be treated as a mere inconvenience or private loss, but must be evaluated under the Bible’s highest moral categories. Scripture consistently teaches that human beings bear God’s image, that innocent bloodshed is a profound evil, and that civil justice exists to uphold the sanctity of human life. When these principles are brought together, a coherent biblical-penological argument emerges: if the unborn is fully human, then the intentional killing of the unborn falls under the same “life for life” moral logic Scripture applies to intentional homicide.

This essay argues that (1) Scripture recognizes the unborn as truly human, (2) Scripture distinguishes accidental from intentional killing, and (3) Scripture assigns “life for life” as the fitting judicial response to deliberate, unjust killing of a human being. Taken together, these principles establish that, within the Bible’s own categories, the deliberate destruction of unborn life would be treated as a capital offense in principle.

1. The unborn as a human life under biblical moral concern

The Bible does not treat personhood as something earned after birth, nor does it ground human dignity in development, independence, or social recognition. Instead, it presents human worth as rooted in God’s creative act and purpose.

This is seen throughout Scripture’s way of speaking about life in the womb. The unborn are not described as “potential people” but as real subjects of God’s knowledge, calling, and care. The biblical worldview treats the womb as a place where human life truly exists and where God is already at work in forming persons. Thus, unborn life falls under the category of human life that matters morally, not simply biologically.

This framework is essential: if the unborn is within the moral category of “human being,” then what is done to the unborn cannot be treated as morally trivial.

2. Exodus 21:22–25: injury to the unborn and “life for life”

Exodus 21:22–25 is a key legal text because it places pregnancy outcomes inside the court’s concern and assigns penalties based on harm.

The case describes men fighting who strike a pregnant woman so that “her children come out.” The law then divides outcomes:

If the children come out but no harm follows, a fine is imposed under judicial oversight.
If harm follows, the legal principle becomes lex talionis: “life for life, eye for eye…”

The critical point is that this is not merely a fine-for-loss framework. When harm is present, the text moves immediately into the Bible’s highest judicial language: the proportional justice of life and limb.

Within biblical penology, “life for life” is the category used when a human life has been wrongfully taken. Exodus 21 does not treat pregnancy loss as automatically outside that category; rather, it introduces a scenario where a pregnancy crisis can trigger the law’s strongest justice principle. That strongly supports the conclusion that the unborn child is regarded as the kind of being who can suffer legally cognizable harm—up to and including death—and that such harm invokes proportionate justice.

In other words, Exodus 21 places the unborn within the realm of persons protected by the same judicial logic used to protect any human life.

3. Genesis 9:5–6: the image of God and the principle of capital accountability

Genesis 9:5–6 provides the foundational rationale for biblical penology concerning homicide:

“Whoever sheds the blood of man, by man shall his blood be shed, for God made man in his own image.”

This passage grounds the seriousness of murder in the doctrine of the imago Dei: human beings uniquely bear God’s image. For that reason, the unjust shedding of human blood requires an equally weighty judicial response. The principle is straightforward:

Murder violates the image of God in the victim.
Therefore justice requires the life of the offender in response.

This is not presented as emotional revenge but as moral accounting. The penalty corresponds to the value of what was destroyed. Since the victim’s life was image-bearing life, the punishment is proportionate: “by man shall his blood be shed.”

The relevance to unborn life is clear in principle: if the unborn is truly human—an image-bearing human life—then the deliberate destruction of that life is the deliberate shedding of human blood, the category Genesis 9 places under the ultimate judicial sanction.

4. Numbers 35: the Bible’s sharpest legal logic on intentional killing

Numbers 35 offers some of the most explicit penal instruction in Scripture on homicide. It distinguishes accidental killing from intentional killing and repeatedly affirms that the murderer “shall be put to death.” It also forbids commutation:

“You shall accept no ransom for the life of a murderer… he shall be put to death.”

This is central to biblical penology: some crimes are so severe that they cannot be made right with compensation. The life taken cannot be bought back. The law treats intentional homicide as a unique offense that threatens the moral fabric of the community.

Numbers 35 also describes bloodshed as defiling the land and insists that justice must address it rather than ignore it. Thus, the penalty is not a private vendetta but a public moral act intended to uphold the sanctity of life and restrain further violence.

Applied as a principle, the logic would be: if intentional killing of a human life is what triggers this sanction, and if unborn life is human life, then intentional killing of unborn life falls under the same moral classification.

5. Intent and culpability: why deliberate killing is treated more severely than accidental harm

Biblical law does not treat all killing as morally identical. It recognizes categories such as:

accidental death without malice,
negligent harm,
deliberate murder with intent and cunning.

Exodus 21 itself distinguishes between a killing that occurs without intention and one that is carried out intentionally: the former may involve refuge or lesser penalties; the latter requires death even if the offender seeks sanctuary.

This distinction is important because it means the Bible treats intentionality not as a minor detail but as a core moral difference. The more deliberate the act, the greater the culpability.

Therefore, when reasoning within biblical penology, an act that is intentional and aimed at the death of a human being is categorized in the same moral space as murder, not accident.

6. Lex talionis and the moral shape of justice

“Eye for eye” is often misunderstood as primitive vengeance, but in Scripture it functions as a restraint and a measure:

punishment must match harm,
justice must not be arbitrary,
the poor and weak must not be discounted,
the powerful must not escape accountability.

Because the loss of life is the greatest harm, the logic of lex talionis culminates in “life for life.” It represents the principle that the law exists to treat human life as morally sacred and not negotiable.

If the unborn is fully human, then the law’s “life for life” structure becomes morally relevant whenever unborn life is unjustly taken.

7. The synthesized conclusion inside the biblical system

When the biblical principles are assembled, the argument forms a consistent chain:

Human life bears God’s image and therefore has inviolable moral value (Genesis 9:6).
The unborn is treated in Scripture as real human life, not as a non-personal object.
Exodus 21:22–25 places pregnancy harm within judicial concern and applies “life for life” when harm rises to the level of fatality.
Biblical law treats deliberate killing as uniquely severe, distinguishing it from accident and negligence (Exodus 21; Numbers 35).
Therefore, within the Bible’s own categories, the deliberate killing of unborn human life falls under the same moral classification as intentional homicide and thus under the “life for life” principle of biblical penology.

This does not depend on later philosophy, medical knowledge, or social convention. It is an argument from the Bible’s own view of life, justice, and moral accountability.

Conclusion

Biblical penology is built on the sanctity of human life as image-bearing life. Exodus 21:22–25 is significant because it brings unborn life into the legal sphere of harm and justice and employs the strongest judicial principle—“life for life”—in a pregnancy-related case. Genesis 9:5–6 establishes that the shedding of human blood requires capital accountability because the victim bears God’s image, and Numbers 35 clarifies that intentional homicide is a crime that cannot be settled through compensation but demands the highest sanction.

If the unborn is fully human, then the deliberate destruction of unborn life necessarily falls within the Bible’s category of unjust bloodshed and therefore within the moral logic of “life for life.” Within the biblical system itself, this conclusion is not an emotional leap but an application of the Bible’s consistent justice principles to the status of the unborn as fully human persons.

Saturday, January 3, 2026

Divine Goodness, Redemption, and the Origin of Spirits: A Redemptive-Historical Critique of Augustinian Teleology

By Rev. William M Brennan, TH.D.

Abstract

This essay argues that dominant Augustinian and Reformed accounts of creation, evil, and final judgment rest upon a speculative teleology—namely, that the chief end of creation is the demonstration of divine attributes—that is neither explicitly biblical nor internally coherent. When combined with doctrines of eternal punishment, this framework fractures divine benevolence and sovereignty, redefining “good” as instrumental to divine self-manifestation rather than as other-directed love. By contrast, the redemptive-historical narrative of Scripture presents creation as ordered toward redemption, culminating in the incarnation, death, and resurrection of Christ. Within this framework, traditional accounts of the origin of human spirits—creationism and traducianism—prove inadequate, motivating renewed consideration of the pre-existence of spirits as a provisional explanatory hypothesis. While Scripture does not explicitly teach pre-existence, neither does it foreclose it; moreover, pre-existence coheres more naturally with an entirely redemptive telos while avoiding moral and metaphysical difficulties endemic to orthodox alternatives. The essay concludes by defending epistemic humility: theological coherence must be pursued where Scripture speaks, but dogmatic closure must be resisted where revelation remains silent.

1. Introduction: Teleology as the Hidden Determinant

Disagreements about hell, judgment, and redemption often mask a deeper divergence concerning the purpose of creation. In post-Augustinian Western theology, especially in its Reformed scholastic forms, creation is frequently construed as a theater for the manifestation of divine attributes—justice, mercy, sovereignty, and power. Within this paradigm, eternal punishment is justified as “good” insofar as it displays divine justice, even if it does not serve the good of the punished.

By contrast, Scripture presents a redemptive-historical narrative in which creation, covenant, judgment, and restoration are unified within a single salvific purpose. The present study contends that these two frameworks are incompatible. The former fractures divine attributes into competing principles; the latter integrates them within divine love as revealed in Christ. This divergence has significant implications for doctrines of evil, hell, anthropology, and the origin of spirits.

2. Augustine, Privation, and the Persistence of Evil

Augustine’s privation theory of evil correctly denies evil any positive ontological status, defining it instead as the absence or corruption of good. However, Augustine simultaneously affirms the eternal persistence of privation in the damned. Evil is thus defeated ontologically but preserved eschatologically.

This position introduces a tension. Privation, by definition, has no intrinsic telos; it exists only parasitically upon the good. To maintain privation eternally—without restorative intent—requires appealing not to benevolence but to divine will. Eternal punishment is therefore justified not as good for the creature, but as good for the order of creation or for the manifestation of justice. Divine sovereignty and divine goodness are asserted together but never fully reconciled. They remain in dialectical stasis.

Later Reformed theology intensifies this structure by explicitly grounding eternal reprobation in God’s decretive will, often framing it as necessary for the full display of divine glory. This move does not resolve Augustine’s tension; it hardens it.

3. The Biblical Grammar of Divine Goodness and Love

Biblically, divine goodness is not defined abstractly but narratively and relationally. “Good” consistently denotes that which gives life, restores communion, and perfects the other. Divine justice is covenantal and restorative, not retributive as an end in itself. Judgment serves redemptive history; it is never portrayed as intrinsically valuable apart from its relation to healing and restoration.

The definitive revelation of God’s nature is the cross of Christ. Here, justice, power, and glory are expressed through self-giving love and suffering-for-the-other. Any theological account that renders eternal loss “good” while denying its loving or restorative character stands in tension with this Christological center.

Accordingly, the “grand demonstration of attributes” model proves alien to the biblical witness. Scripture does not present creation as a metaphysical exhibition but as the arena of God’s redemptive action.

4. Hell as Necessity Without Eternalization

A redemptive-historical framework does not deny hell or judgment. Rather, it reconceives them as necessary consequences of sin within a moral universe ordered by holiness. An unregenerate spirit cannot immediately abide the divine presence; therefore, a real post-mortem state of exclusion, confinement, or darkness must exist. Scripture’s language of Hades, prison, chains of darkness, and second death coheres with this understanding.

Crucially, such judgment need not be metaphysically eternal. From the creature’s perspective, it may be indefinite and inescapable apart from divine intervention. From God’s perspective, it remains subordinate to redemption and does not require the eternal preservation of evil. This preserves both divine holiness and divine love without redefining goodness as self-serving.

5. Anthropological Difficulties: Creationism and Traducianism

The origin of individual human spirits remains one of theology’s most persistent unresolved questions. Two dominant orthodox accounts both fail under scrutiny.

Creationism, which posits that God creates each soul ex nihilo, cannot adequately account for the universal inheritance of a sinful nature without implicating God in the creation of corruption. Traducianism, which locates the transmission of the soul in biological generation, struggles to explain the sinlessness of Christ without ad hoc exceptions.

These failures do not merely reflect gaps in knowledge; they reveal structural incoherence. Both systems claim dogmatic certainty where Scripture offers none.

6. Pre-Existence as a Provisional Hypothesis

The hypothesis of the pre-existence of spirits—historically associated with Origen—re-emerges not from speculative excess but from explanatory necessity. Pre-existence avoids attributing the origin of sin to God, preserves Christ’s purity, accounts for inherited dispositions, and coheres with a redemptive telos in which creation serves healing rather than demonstration.

Scripture does not explicitly teach pre-existence. However, it does not explicitly deny it either. The absence of direct teaching is plausibly explained by irrelevance to human redemption—the central concern of revelation—rather than by refutation. Angels, described as “sons of God,” moral agents subject to judgment, and beings bearing likeness to God, further complicate simplistic denials of pre-temporal moral existence.

Pre-existence should therefore be held provisionally, not dogmatically, as a plausible explanatory framework rather than revealed doctrine.

7. Covenant, Redemption, and Epistemic Humility

The guiding principle emerging from this analysis is methodological rather than speculative: metaphysics must be subordinate to redemption. Where Scripture speaks—of Christ, covenant, judgment, resurrection—it demands coherence and integration. Where Scripture is silent—on the origin of spirits—it demands humility rather than closure.

Theological systems that absolutize speculative accounts while redefining divine goodness betray the redemptive grammar of Scripture. By contrast, a restrained openness to unresolved questions honors both divine revelation and creaturely limitation.

8. Conclusion

The Augustinian–Reformed paradigm, grounded in an unscriptural teleology of attribute-demonstration, cannot integrate divine sovereignty and divine love without redefining goodness and eternalizing evil. A redemptive-historical framework, centered on Christ and ordered toward restoration, offers a more biblically coherent alternative.

Within this framework, traditional accounts of spirit-origins prove inadequate, rendering pre-existence a compelling but provisional hypothesis. Whether ultimately correct or not, such a hypothesis better serves a theology in which creation exists not to display God, but to be healed by Him.

The task of theology is not to resolve every mystery, but to ensure that where God has revealed Himself—in Christ crucified and risen—our doctrines do not contradict the love they proclaim.

Monday, December 22, 2025

Eternal Privation and the Failure of Augustinian Justice: A Biblical, Moral, and Metaphysical Critique

by William M. Brennan, TH.D.

Abstract

This essay argues that the Augustinian doctrine of eternal punishment is internally incoherent, metaphysically unstable, and theologically unbiblical. While Augustine’s privation theory of evil successfully rejects Manichaean ontological dualism, his commitment to everlasting non-restorative punishment reintroduces a functional dualism at the level of eschatological finality. Moreover, Augustine’s prioritization of retributive justice and cosmic order over universal restoration undermines the biblical revelation of God’s fatherly love as articulated by Jesus, particularly in the Sermon on the Mount. When combined with a refutation of Anselmian infinite-penalty reasoning and a biblical account of justice as finite, purposive, and restorative, the Augustinian model collapses under its own moral and theological weight.

1. Augustine’s Privation Theory and Its Eschatological Remainder

Augustine’s definition of evil as privatio boni was developed explicitly to refute Manichaean dualism. Evil, for Augustine, has no positive ontological status; it is not a substance or principle but a lack, corruption, or disorder within the good. Everything that exists is good insofar as it exists; evil is parasitic upon being.

Yet Augustine simultaneously affirms the everlasting punishment of the damned—creatures whom God sustains eternally in a state of misery, disorder, and loss. This produces a tension that Augustine never resolves: an eternal privation of good preserved forever by divine will.

Although Augustine denies ontological dualism, he affirms what may be called eschatological duality: two everlasting final states, one of perfected participation in the good, the other of permanently unhealed privation. Evil is not co-eternal with God in origin, but it is co-eternal with the good in outcome. As such, evil is not defeated but indefinitely contained.

This amounts to a functional Manichaeanism. Not a dualism of substances, but a dualism of final realities. Evil does not rival good in power, but it rivals it in permanence. The privation that Augustine insists is metaphysically unstable is nonetheless granted eternal stasis.

2. Justice, Order, and the Non-Necessity of Eternal Non-Restoration

Augustine defends eternal punishment primarily by appeal to justice and the order of the whole (tranquillitas ordinis). The final state of the cosmos, he argues, is more ordered when justice is displayed both in mercy and in punishment.

However, this argument only succeeds if justice requires non-restoration. If justice merely permits punishment but does not demand eternal refusal to heal, then the appeal to order fails.

Indeed, if justice is understood as the restoration of right relation—as it frequently is in Scripture—then universal regeneration would produce more order, not less:

fewer disordered wills,
fewer privations,
the elimination rather than preservation of misery,
and the complete reconciliation of creation.

Once it is conceded (as Augustine himself concedes) that God could regenerate the lost without injustice, the refusal to do so cannot be justified by justice. Justice becomes permissive, not determinative. The eternal remainder of privation is therefore not demanded by justice but chosen alongside it.

At that point, eternal punishment is no longer an expression of justice’s necessity but of divine preference—raising unavoidable questions about the moral character of God.

3. Divine Fatherhood and the Sermon on the Mount

The Augustinian restriction of divine fatherhood to the redeemed is biblically unsustainable. Luke’s genealogy explicitly names Adam as “son of God” (Luke 3:38), establishing a universal creational fatherhood. Humanity stands in filial relation to God at least by origin, if not covenant.

Jesus’ teaching in the Sermon on the Mount presses this fatherhood into moral clarity. In his a fortiori argument—“If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father…”—Jesus authorizes moral reasoning from human parental goodness to divine goodness. God is not morally opaque; he is morally superior.

A father—or even a grandfather—who could restore a wayward child from ruin at no cost but instead chose endless abandonment would be judged morally monstrous by ordinary human standards. Jesus explicitly forbids attributing lesser goodness to God than to sinful humans.

Therefore, a theology in which God could regenerate his children but chooses instead to sustain their endless misery violates the moral logic Jesus himself establishes. The appeal to “justice” cannot override this, because justice itself must be an expression of God’s fatherly goodness, not its negation.

4. Biblical Justice as Finite, Purposive, and Complete

Scripture consistently presents divine judgment as measured, finite, and teleological. Punishment is depicted as having a goal—repentance, correction, restoration—not as endless non-closure.

The prophetic language that Israel has “paid double for her sins” is hyperbolic, but its meaning is clear: punishment has been fully borne. Justice reaches satisfaction and therefore ceases. Punishment that never ends is punishment that is never paid.

This exposes a decisive incoherence in the doctrine of eternal punishment:

How could an endless penalty ever be “paid in full”?

A punishment that never terminates can never satisfy justice. It does not restore balance; it preserves imbalance. It does not defeat sin; it eternally memorializes it. Such punishment has no telos and therefore cannot be an expression of biblical justice.

5. The Collapse of Anselmian Infinite-Penalty Reasoning

The later Anselmian argument—that sin against infinite majesty requires infinite punishment—does not rescue Augustine’s position.

If “infinite” is taken quantitatively, then punishment is never complete and justice is never satisfied. If “infinite” is taken qualitatively (as perfection or sufficiency), then endless duration is neither required nor appropriate. Perfect punishment would be complete, not interminable.

Thus the appeal to infinity either renders justice impossible or undermines the very conclusion it is meant to support.

6. Christ’s Sufficiency and the Refusal of Restoration

Augustine affirms that Christ’s atoning work is sufficient for all. He also affirms that God can effectually heal the will without violating freedom (as in the saints). Therefore, there is no metaphysical, moral, or soteriological obstacle to universal restoration.

If restoration is possible, just, cost-free, and more perfectly ordered, then the refusal to restore cannot be justified by justice, order, freedom, or sufficiency. It can only be justified by divine will understood as unconstrained by love’s completion.

At that point, love no longer has the final word.

7. Conclusion: Eternal Privation as Theological Failure

Augustine’s privation theory of evil succeeds in rejecting ontological dualism but fails to deliver eschatological victory. By sustaining an eternal privation within creation, Augustine preserves evil in perpetuity—not as a substance, but as a final condition.

This produces a God who is just but not finally restorative, loving but not victorious, sovereign but willing to preserve unhealed ruin forever. Such a portrait stands in tension with the biblical revelation of God as Father, with the moral logic of Jesus’ teaching, and with Scripture’s vision of judgment as purposive and complete.

If justice does not require refusal to regenerate—and it does not—then eternal punishment represents not the triumph of righteousness but the limitation of love. And a theology in which love does not finally triumph is, by the standards of Scripture itself, theologically defective.

Sunday, November 23, 2025

The Wax Nose of “Infinity”: A Critique of the Misuse of Divine Infinitude in Theology and Its Consequences for Atonement and Eschatology

by Rev. William M. Brennan, TH.D.

Introduction

Few theological terms have caused more confusion, equivocation, and inadvertent error than the word “infinite.” In philosophical theology, infinite has traditionally been applied to God’s being—a move that, if not understood carefully, can mislead both theologian and layperson alike. The term appears noble and venerable, but tradition has wrapped it in layers of conceptual ambiguity. Its modern mathematical meaning (“unending quantity”) competes with its classical metaphysical meaning (“unbounded, without defect”). The result is what Gordon H. Clark called a “nonsense term” when used incautiously, and what others have called a wax nose—a term flexible enough to be shaped into whatever argument one needs.

This essay seeks to accomplish four aims:

To clarify the original classical meaning of infinite as used by theologians.
To expose the modern quantitative meaning that often infiltrates doctrine unnoticed.
To show how the confusion between these two meanings undermines theological arguments, particularly the Anselmian claim that sin against an “infinitely majestic” God requires “infinite punishment.”
To argue that the term infinite should be either radically redefined or abandoned altogether, replaced with clearer concepts like “perfect,” “complete,” and “unchanging.”

The argument proceeds by showing that once infinite is properly understood in its classical sense, Anselm’s argument for eternal conscious torment collapses, because it depends on smuggling in the quantitative meaning of infinity. Theological language must therefore be purged of equivocation to maintain coherence and fidelity to Scripture.

1. The Classical Meaning of “Infinite”: Not Quantity, but Perfection

The first and most important point is this: the classical theological tradition does not use the word “infinite” in the modern mathematical sense of unending quantity or endless process. Thomas Aquinas, Augustine, Boethius, and the Reformed scholastics all used the Latin infinitas to mean “not finite,” which in turn means:

not limited
not defective
not composite
not dependent
not possessing unrealized potential

In classical metaphysics, infinite means fullness of actuality, not unbounded size or amount. It is a negative term (via negativa): God is “infinite” because He is not bounded by the limitations that characterize creatures.

Thus:

“Infinite” in classical theology = “perfect,” “complete,” “without defect or limitation.”

Yet in English, the plain meaning of infinite suggests:

endless increase
unending quantity
unbounded expansion
the mathematical infinite of the number line

This is why the term leads to confusion: it no longer means what classical theology intended. In the modern mind, infinite is nearly always taken quantitatively. The theologian’s meaning and the layman’s meaning have drifted so far apart that the word now functions ambiguously at best and deceptively at worst.

2. The Modern Mathematical Meaning of “Infinity”: A Contradiction to Classical Theism

Modern mathematics defines “infinity” as potential infinity—a process without limit:

counting forever
adding moments endlessly
extending time or number without completion

The key characteristic of mathematical infinity is that it is never complete. It is endless progression.

But classical theology defines God’s being precisely in terms of completeness, fullness, and the absence of potentiality. To say that God is “infinite” in the mathematical sense would contradict divine immutability, simplicity, and perfection. A God who grows, expands, or increases is not the God of Scripture or classical theism.

Thus:

The mathematical infinite is the opposite of the metaphysical infinite.

To call God “infinite” in the modern sense would make Him:

mutable
unactualized
incomplete
in process
not simple
not perfect

Therefore, theologians who use the word infinite but deny these implications are already using the term in a technical, non-mathematical sense—namely, as perfection.

3. Gordon H. Clark’s Critique: Infinity as a “Nonsense Term” Misapplied to God

Gordon H. Clark offers three crucial criticisms of the term infinite as applied to God:

A. Biblical Objection

Clark showed that none of the biblical texts the Westminster Confession appeals to actually say God is “infinite.”
For example:

Psalm 147:5: “His understanding is without number,” not “infinite.”
Job 22:5: “Thine iniquities are infinite” clearly does not mean literally infinite.
Nahum 3:9: “Infinite strength” in KJV is a bad translation.

Clark concludes that the Bible neither uses nor supports “divine infinity.”

B. Logical Objection

Clark argued that:

Infinity is a mathematical concept.
A truly infinite set can never be completed.
But God’s knowledge must be complete.
Therefore, God cannot have an infinite number of thoughts or propositions.

In his glossary:

“Infinite…a nonsense term. Nothing exists that is infinite.”
“If God were infinite, He could not know all things.”

In other words: infinity as quantity is incompatible with omniscience.

C. Methodological Objection

Clark accused some modern theologians of dishonesty: they affirm “God is infinite” but then redefine “infinite” to mean “perfect” or “complete,” which is not what the word means in normal English.

This is the “wax nose” problem: the term is so flexible that theologians can shape it however they want, often smuggling in illicit meanings.

4. The Wax Nose of Infinity: How Theologians Accidentally Smuggle in Quantitative Meaning

Even theologians who think they are using the classical definition frequently slip into the modern one when building arguments.

Why? Because the word itself invites quantitative interpretation.

Examples:

“God’s infinite love” becomes “love for every possible thing, even evil.”
“God’s infinite justice” becomes “justice requiring infinite punishment.”
“God’s infinite power” becomes “the power to do contradictions.”
“God’s infinite wrath” becomes “endless retributive anger.”

Each of these is a quantitative misunderstanding, not a metaphysical one.

The moment one uses the word “infinite,” the modern mind automatically thinks of size, amount, or duration.

This is precisely how Anselm’s argument for eternal punishment sneaks in a quantitative notion of infinity, even though the classical definition does not support it.

5. Anselm’s Argument and the Hidden Quantitative Infinity

Anselm’s classic reasoning in Cur Deus Homo is:

God is infinitely majestic.
Sin is therefore an offense of infinite magnitude.
A finite creature cannot make satisfaction for an infinite offense.
Therefore the punishment of the sinner is infinite (in duration).
Or only God can make satisfaction (which calls for the Incarnation and the God-man).

At first glance, this seems reasonable. But the logic only holds if “infinite” is used quantitatively at two crucial steps:

Step 2: “Infinite magnitude”
Step 4: “Infinite duration”

These are not metaphysical infinities; they are mathematical infinities.

Anselm begins with:

qualitative infinity (God’s perfection)

but quietly converts it into:

quantitative infinity (infinite offense)

and finally into:

temporal infinity (eternal punishment)

This is a textbook equivocation fallacy.

Once we restore the classical meaning of “infinite” as “perfect,” the argument collapses:

God is perfect in majesty.
Sin is a maximal offense.
Punishment must be fitting or perfect, not quantitatively infinite.

There is no logical pathway from perfection to infinite duration.

6. Why “Infinite Punishment” Is Conceptually Absurd

Punishment cannot be “infinite” in any coherent sense.

A. Infinite Duration = Mathematical Infinity

“Infinite punishment” is usually taken to mean:

unending temporal duration
a series of moments without limit
an unfinishable process
a potential infinite

This is the infinity of numbers, not the infinity of metaphysics.

B. Perfect Punishment ≠ Infinite Punishment

A perfect punishment is:

complete
fitting
just
resolved
finished

But “infinite duration” is never complete. It is always in progress.

Thus:

An endless punishment is, by definition, an imperfect punishment.

It never accomplishes its purpose.
It never resolves the offense.
It never reaches completion.

If divine perfection guides divine justice, punishment must be perfect, not endless.

7. The Proper Conclusion: Perfect Majesty Requires Perfect Punishment

Your insight is the corrective:

If the offense is against a perfectly majestic Being,
the punishment must be perfect, not infinite.

A perfect punishment may be:

proportional
purifying
restorative
corrective
temporary
aimed at the healing of the offender
fitting the moral order God wills to establish

But it need not, and indeed cannot, be infinite in the mathematical sense.

A perfect God administers perfect justice—not infinite suffering.

8. Examples of Theological Missteps Due to Quantitative Infinity

A. Jonathan Edwards

Edwards argued that since God is infinite, sin incurs infinite guilt, requiring infinite punishment. This explicitly equates God’s metaphysical infinity with infinite magnitude.

B. Certain Reformed Scholastics

Some used “infinite justice” as a justification for eternal hell, inadvertently invoking a quantitative notion inconsistent with perfection.

C. Popular Evangelical Apologetics

The phrase “infinite offense against an infinite God deserves infinite punishment” has become a slogan detached from its metaphysical roots.

In all these cases, infinity becomes a wax nose—stretched far beyond its classical sense.

9. The Way Forward: Abandoning or Radically Qualifying “Infinity”

Given all this, theologians should:

Option A: Abandon the term entirely

Instead of calling God “infinite,” describe Him as:

perfect
complete
unchanging
immutable
simple
fully actual
lacking nothing

These terms are clearer, biblical, and immune to quantitative distortion.

Option B: Use “infinite” only with severe qualification

If the term must be used (e.g. for historical continuity), it should be defined explicitly as perfection, not quantity.

But the safer route is simply to drop the term.

Conclusion

The term infinite, as traditionally applied to God, is conceptually unstable in modern contexts. Its classical meaning—“without defect or limitation”—has been eclipsed by its modern mathematical meaning—“unending quantity.” This shift has allowed theologians to smuggle quantitative concepts into doctrines where they do not belong, especially in the area of punishment, guilt, and atonement.

The most destructive example is Anselm’s argument for infinite punishment, which depends on equivocating between:

metaphysical infinity (perfection)
quantitative infinity (magnitude)
temporal infinity (duration)

Once infinity is restored to its proper meaning—or abandoned altogether—Anselm’s deduction collapses. We are left not with eternal conscious torment, but with the demand for perfect, fitting, morally complete punishment, consistent with God’s goodness, wisdom, and ultimate purposes.

In this light, “infinite punishment” is not only unnecessary—it is logically impossible. What remains is the perfection of divine justice, which, rather than expressing itself through endless torment, fulfills its purposes in a manner consistent with the character of a perfect, complete, and unchanging God.

Wednesday, October 29, 2025

A Biblical Critique of Hosea Ballou’s Theology of Atonement, Wrath, and Covenant Judgment

By William M. Brennan, Th.D., Reformed Universalist Theological Seminary

I. Introduction

Among the early American Universalists, few figures exerted greater influence than Hosea Ballou (1771–1852). Through his Treatise on Atonement (1805), Ballou became the chief architect of a rationalist and moral-influence Universalism that rejected both Trinitarian orthodoxy and the penal, substitutionary character of the atonement. His God was benevolent but never wrathful; His justice was moral suasion, not judicial holiness. Ballou’s system sought to vindicate divine goodness by abolishing wrath and reinterpreting the cross as revelation rather than redemption.

Yet, by removing wrath, Ballou removed the moral gravity of sin; by rejecting substitution, he dissolved the gospel’s heart. Scripture’s portrait of God—holy, covenantal, and redemptively wrathful—cannot be reconciled with Ballou’s sentimental Deism. The same divine love that saves also judges; the same fire that refines also consumes. This essay critiques Ballou’s view in light of Scripture, demonstrating that God’s wrath, far from contradicting love, is its necessary and restorative expression.

II. Hosea Ballou’s Theology Summarized

Ballou advanced several key propositions that define his departure from biblical orthodoxy:

Sin as ignorance, not depravity. Ballou denied original sin and insisted that human beings are not fallen but misinformed. Evil arises from misunderstanding rather than rebellion.
Atonement as moral influence. The cross is not a propitiation satisfying divine justice but a revelation of God’s love persuading humanity to repentance.
Reconciliation one-sided. God was never alienated from man; only man needed reconciliation.
No wrath, no punishment. Because God is love, He can never be wrathful. All suffering is natural consequence, not judicial penalty.
Universal restoration by enlightenment. Eventually, all souls will see the truth and return to God freely.

These assertions form a system that divorces salvation from covenant, grace from judgment, and mercy from justice.

III. The Biblical Witness to Divine Wrath

Scripture opens the gospel with wrath, not sentimental affection. Romans 1:18 declares:

“For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who hold the truth in unrighteousness.”

Here wrath (orgē Theou) is not impersonal consequence but the active judgment of a righteous God who hands sinners over to the fruit of their rebellion:

“Wherefore God also gave them up to uncleanness… For this cause God gave them up unto vile affections… And even as they did not like to retain God in their knowledge, God gave them over to a reprobate mind” (Rom. 1:24, 26, 28).

The phrase “gave them up” denotes judicial action—God enforcing His moral order, not merely allowing natural effect. Humanity is not ignorant but willfully suppresses known truth (Rom. 1:19–21). Ballou’s moral-educational model cannot account for this culpable defiance.

Likewise, Ephesians 2:3 calls us “by nature the children of wrath,” signifying an inherent condition of alienation. The divine wrath is not caprice; it is holiness opposing corruption. To deny wrath is to deny God’s righteousness.

Hebrews 10:31 solemnly warns:

“It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God.”

This is spoken not to pagans but to covenant breakers who “have trodden under foot the Son of God” (Heb. 10:29). Ballou’s claim that God never punishes contradicts the testimony of both Testaments: judgment is the moral outworking of divine holiness.

IV. Wrath and Covenant Judgment in Israel

The covenant history of Israel displays wrath as love’s instrument. From Sinai onward, God’s people were warned that obedience would bring blessing and disobedience curse:

“If ye will not hearken unto me, and will not do all these commandments… I will bring a sword upon you, that shall avenge the quarrel of my covenant: and when ye are gathered together within your cities, I will send the pestilence among you… and I will scatter you among the heathen” (Lev. 26:14, 25, 33).

Israel’s exile was not divine temper but covenant enforcement. Jeremiah 16:10–13 records God’s verdict:

“Because your fathers have forsaken me, saith the LORD… therefore will I cast you out of this land into a land that ye know not.”

This wrath, however, was never final. It was disciplinary, intended to purge idolatry and restore faithfulness. Isaiah 40:1–2 announces the completion of that process:

“Comfort ye, comfort ye my people, saith your God. Speak ye comfortably to Jerusalem, and cry unto her, that her warfare is accomplished, that her iniquity is pardoned: for she hath received of the LORD’s hand double for all her sins.”

The “double” signifies full satisfaction—the completion of covenant chastisement. Israel “paid double,” not because God delights in punishment, but because justice had achieved its redemptive purpose.

This historical pattern exposes Ballou’s error. Divine wrath is not contrary to mercy; it secures mercy. God’s covenant faithfulness expresses itself both in judgment and in comfort. Without wrath, there would be no exile, no repentance, and no restoration.

V. The Fall and Human Inability

Ballou’s denial of the Fall undermines the biblical diagnosis of the human condition. Romans 5:12 declares:

“Wherefore, as by one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin; and so death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned.”

This is not mere imitation of Adam’s mistake; Paul continues:

“By one man’s disobedience many were made sinners” (Rom. 5:19).

Adam’s guilt is representative and covenantal, just as Christ’s obedience is. Ballou’s reading—“because all individually sin”—ignores the parallelism of Adam and Christ that structures Paul’s thought. The universality of death proves the universality of guilt.

Ephesians 2:1–5 further declares:

“And you hath he quickened, who were dead in trespasses and sins… But God, who is rich in mercy, for his great love wherewith he loved us, even when we were dead in sins, hath quickened us together with Christ.”

Death is more than ignorance; it is inability. Only divine regeneration can restore life. Ballou’s optimistic anthropology renders the new birth unnecessary and contradicts the testimony of Christ:

“Except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God” (John 3:3).

VI. The Necessity of Substitutionary Atonement

If wrath and guilt are real, then substitution is indispensable. Romans 3:25–26 explains:

“Whom God hath set forth to be a propitiation through faith in his blood, to declare his righteousness for the remission of sins… that he might be just, and the justifier of him which believeth in Jesus.”

The term propitiation (Greek hilastērion) refers to satisfaction of divine justice, echoing the mercy seat where atoning blood was sprinkled. Ballou dismissed this as “barbaric,” yet Scripture exalts it as the heart of the gospel.

Isaiah 53:5–6 prophesies:

“He was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities: the chastisement of our peace was upon him; and with his stripes we are healed. All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned every one to his own way; and the LORD hath laid on him the iniquity of us all.”

The Servant bears divine judgment as substitute, fulfilling the pattern of sacrificial law. Peter confirms:

“Christ also hath once suffered for sins, the just for the unjust, that he might bring us to God” (1 Pet. 3:18).

The cross is therefore both judicial and redemptive: justice satisfied, mercy unleashed. Without substitution, the atonement reveals love but accomplishes nothing.

VII. Judgment as Restorative, Not Merely Consequential

Ballou erred in equating judgment with vindictiveness. Scripture presents judgment as God’s instrument of restoration. Isaiah 26:9 teaches:

“When thy judgments are in the earth, the inhabitants of the world will learn righteousness.”

Likewise, 1 Corinthians 11:32 says,

“When we are judged, we are chastened of the Lord, that we should not be condemned with the world.”

Even divine wrath serves pedagogical grace: it purges sin to reveal righteousness. Hebrews 12:6 adds,

“For whom the Lord loveth he chasteneth, and scourgeth every son whom he receiveth.”

Thus, wrath is not the opposite of love but its severe form. The same fire that consumed Sodom refines Zion. God’s wrath and mercy operate toward one end—the restoration of holiness throughout creation.

In this sense, a truly biblical universalism must affirm wrath. The final reconciliation of all things (1 Cor. 15:28) comes through judgment, not by ignoring it. “When he hath put down all rule and all authority and power… the last enemy that shall be destroyed is death” (1 Cor. 15:24–26). Death is conquered only because Christ entered wrath and exhausted it.

VIII. The Consequences of Ballou’s Denial

By abolishing wrath and guilt, Ballou’s system unravels Christian theology:

Sin trivialized. If sin is ignorance, repentance becomes education rather than conversion.
Justice denied. Without judgment, moral order collapses; evil has no answer.
The cross emptied. If no penalty is borne, Christ’s death is illustrative, not redemptive.
Covenant severed. Without law and curse, there can be no grace or blessing.
Universalism rendered meaningless. If all are already reconciled, the term “salvation” loses significance.

Biblical universalism, by contrast, affirms both wrath and grace. It sees judgment as the fiery path to restoration. God’s wrath is not eternal torment but temporal and purgative discipline culminating in resurrection and renewal. Ballou, in rejecting wrath, severed the nerve of redemption itself.

IX. Conclusion

From Eden to Babylon to Calvary, Scripture reveals a consistent moral logic: divine wrath is the holy energy of love opposing all that destroys creation. Israel’s exile, the “double payment” of Isaiah 40:2, and Christ’s cross each display the same covenantal pattern—judgment unto mercy.

Ballou’s benevolent deity, incapable of wrath, cannot account for the exile, the cross, or the resurrection. The biblical God is both Judge and Savior. “Behold therefore the goodness and severity of God” (Rom. 11:22). His wrath is not His last word but the means by which His goodness triumphs.

The gospel proclaims that the wrath due to sin fell upon Christ, that death itself was judged, and that through that judgment all will ultimately be made alive. A universalism worthy of Scripture must therefore be Reformed and covenantal: one in which divine love fulfills, not abolishes, divine justice.

In the hands of the living God, wrath becomes restoration, and judgment becomes the doorway to everlasting life.

Notes

Hosea Ballou, A Treatise on Atonement (Boston: 1805), chaps. 5–7.
James Relly, Union; or, A Treatise of the Consanguinity and Affinity between Christ and His Church (London: 1759).
John Murray, Letters and Sketches of Sermons (Boston: 1812), esp. pp. 120–145.
Compare Ballou, Treatise, 17–18, with Romans 1:18–32 and Ephesians 2:1–5.
See Jonathan Edwards, The Justice of God in the Damnation of Sinners (1734), for the classic Reformed defense of divine wrath as moral necessity.
On covenant sanctions, see Leviticus 26; Deuteronomy 28; Jeremiah 16; Ezekiel 36.
Isaiah 40:2 interpreted as “double for all her sins” shows disciplinary completion, not excess punishment.
Romans 5:12–19 and 1 Corinthians 15:22 present federal headship as the framework of redemption.
Romans 3:25–26; cf. Hebrews 9:11–14.
Isaiah 53; 1 Peter 3:18; Galatians 3:13–14.
Isaiah 26:9; Hebrews 12:6; 1 Corinthians 11:32.
Romans 11:22 summarizes the dual nature of divine love—goodness and severity—as essential to true theodicy.

About the Author
Dr. William M. Brennan, Th.D., is the founder of the Reformed Universalist Theological Seminary and author of Hope for the Lost: The Case for Evangelical Universalism. He teaches theology and biblical studies with a focus on covenantal universalism, divine justice, and the problem of evil.

The Tragedy of Freedom: The Historical Drift of Arminianism and Its Failure as a Theodicy

by Rev. William M. Brennan, TH.D.

I. Introduction

From Augustine to the Remonstrants, the problem of freedom and evil has haunted Christian theology. Arminianism arose in the seventeenth century as a protest against Augustinian determinism, seeking to vindicate God’s goodness through the preservation of libertarian free will. Yet the historical development of the Arminian tradition reveals a tragic irony: in attempting to rescue God from the charge of tyranny, it rendered Him impotent and morally inconsistent. The benevolent deity of Arminian thought permits the eternal ruin of billions to preserve the supposed dignity of creaturely choice. Such a God, far from being loving, appears self-regarding and indifferent.

Moreover, the Arminian reliance upon foreknowledge as the basis of election not only misconstrues the biblical text but evacuates divine sovereignty of meaning. Scripture consistently affirms both human inability and God’s unconditional predestination. The attempt to explain away these doctrines undercuts the very justice and goodness Arminianism sought to defend.

II. The Early Arminian Vision: Grace Restoring a Lost Freedom

Jacobus Arminius (1559–1609) maintained that fallen humanity was totally depraved and incapable of turning to God without divine initiative. His innovation lay in the doctrine of prevenient grace, an influence that precedes conversion and restores sufficient freedom for all persons to respond to God’s call.¹ Grace, in this view, is resistible; the will is synergistic with grace rather than monergistically regenerated.

The Remonstrant Articles of 1610 formally articulated this position, affirming that divine election is conditional upon foreseen faith.² God, according to this scheme, looks down the corridors of time, perceives who will freely believe, and elects them on that basis. Thus election becomes a divine ratification of human choice rather than its cause.

Yet this approach introduces insuperable moral and metaphysical difficulties. It postulates a God who foresees the universal fall, foreknows the eternal damnation of the majority, and nevertheless proceeds with creation—without any plan to redeem the totality of His handiwork. Divine goodness is thereby subordinated to the abstract principle of libertarian freedom.

III. The Wesleyan Refinement and Its Moral Paradox

John Wesley inherited Arminius’s framework but deepened its devotional and moral character. He affirmed total corruption but taught that Christ’s atonement restored prevenient grace to all.³ Salvation thus remains universally accessible yet perpetually resistible. In practice, Wesleyan Arminianism inspired evangelistic fervor and personal holiness, but philosophically it could not resolve the contradiction between divine benevolence and eternal loss. If God’s love is truly universal and His grace sufficient for all, how can He rest while any are finally lost? The divine permission of everlasting ruin becomes indistinguishable from indifference.

IV. The American Devolution: From Grace to Natural Ability

Nineteenth-century American revivalism carried Arminian theology to its logical but disastrous conclusion. Charles Finney (1792–1875) rejected inherited guilt and moral inability, insisting that sinners possess full natural power to repent.⁴ Grace became merely persuasive rather than regenerative. This shift from prevenient to motivational grace marked the transition from theological Arminianism to moralistic voluntarism.

In Finney’s system, divine love ceases to be redemptive power and becomes moral influence. The sinner is no longer dependent upon grace but upon his own decision. What began as a protest against fatalism ended as an exaltation of self-sufficiency. Thus Arminianism devolved into practical Pelagianism.

V. The Inadequacy of Arminian Theodicy

Even in its most sophisticated form, Arminianism fails to justify the ways of God to man. Its deity is omniscient yet chooses to actualize a world in which sin and eternal misery are foreknown and unredeemed. The claim that divine love requires the possibility of rejection empties love of its redemptive content. A parent who permits his children to destroy themselves eternally for the sake of preserving their “freedom” is not loving but callous.

Augustine’s determinism, for all its harshness, limited the experiment of free will to two individuals—Adam and Eve. The Arminian God repeats this experiment with billions, fully aware that most will perish. Thus Arminianism does not mitigate the problem of evil but multiplies it exponentially.

VI. Scriptural Testimony to Human Inability

The biblical witness is unequivocal concerning the moral and spiritual impotence of fallen humanity:

“There is none righteous, no, not one; there is none that understandeth, there is none that seeketh after God” (Rom. 3:10–11, KJV).
“No man can come to me, except the Father which hath sent me draw him” (John 6:44).
“The natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God... neither can he know them” (1 Cor. 2:14).
“The carnal mind is enmity against God... neither indeed can be” (Rom. 8:7).

These texts affirm more than mere moral weakness; they assert inability—a radical incapacity that only divine grace can overcome. The Arminian claim that prevenient grace universally restores ability lacks explicit biblical support and renders these statements effectively meaningless.

VII. Scriptural Testimony to Divine Election

In contrast to the Arminian scheme of conditional election, Scripture presents election as sovereign, unconditional, and rooted in God’s eternal purpose:

“He hath chosen us in him before the foundation of the world” (Eph. 1:4).
“According to his own purpose and grace, which was given us in Christ Jesus before the world began” (2 Tim. 1:9).
“As many as were ordained to eternal life believed” (Acts 13:48).
“For whom he did foreknow, he also did predestinate... moreover whom he did predestinate, them he also called...” (Rom. 8:29–30).

In these passages, foreknowledge is not mere prescience but fore-love—God’s gracious determination to set His affection upon certain persons.⁵ The grammar of Romans 8:29 places foreknowledge and predestination in a causal sequence within God’s decree, not as an observational act of foresight. If election were conditional upon foreseen faith, then faith would precede divine choice, undermining Paul’s explicit statement that election “is not of him that willeth, nor of him that runneth, but of God that showeth mercy” (Rom. 9:16).

VIII. The Inadequacy of “Foreknowledge” as the Ground of Election

The Arminian view of foreknowledge reduces divine omniscience to passive awareness. It imagines God as an observer of future contingencies, not as their ordainer. Yet such a conception is logically incoherent: if God merely knows what free creatures will do, His knowledge still makes those acts certain; and if they are certain, they are no longer indeterminate. Thus, conditional election collapses into either determinism or open theism.

Moreover, biblical “foreknowledge” (Greek proginōskō) carries the covenantal sense of intimate personal choice rather than abstract cognition. When Scripture says, “The Lord knew you” (Deut. 7:7–8; Amos 3:2), it denotes electing love, not neutral foresight. Therefore, to base election upon foreseen faith reverses the biblical order: faith is the fruit of election, not its cause (Acts 13:48; John 6:37).

IX. The Moral Consequences of the Arminian God

If God foreknows eternal torment for the majority yet elects not to intervene decisively, He becomes morally culpable by omission. To allow preventable evil for the sake of preserving a philosophical abstraction—libertarian freedom—is not love but self-regard. Arminianism thus exchanges divine sovereignty for divine sentimentality. The result is a theodicy in which God’s goodness is compromised, His power curtailed, and His purpose fragmented.

X. Conclusion: The Only Sufficient Theodicy

Both Calvinism and Arminianism falter at the same point: they leave evil with the last word for a portion of God’s creation. Calvinism attributes this to decretal reprobation; Arminianism to autonomous free will. But in either case, the final state of the cosmos is dualistic—evil and good coexisting eternally.

The only theodicy that preserves both divine sovereignty and divine love is one in which predestination aims at universal restoration (Eph. 1:10; Col. 1:20; Rom. 11:32). Election, rightly understood, is not the rejection of the many for the sake of the few but the choosing of the few for the redemption of the many. God’s foreknowledge is not passive observation but purposeful ordination “that God may be all in all” (1 Cor. 15:28).

Thus the tragedy of Arminian freedom is that it exalts the autonomy of the creature above the triumph of divine grace. A truly benevolent God would not rest until every lost soul is restored, for the love that allows eternal loss is no love at all.

Notes

Jacobus Arminius, Works, trans. James Nichols (London: Longman, 1825), 2:192–96.
“The Remonstrant Articles” (1610), in Creeds of Christendom, ed. Philip Schaff (New York: Harper, 1877), 3:545–46.
John Wesley, Sermons on Several Occasions, Sermon 85, “On Working Out Our Own Salvation.”
Charles G. Finney, Systematic Theology (Oberlin, 1846), Lecture 17.
See John Murray, The Epistle to the Romans (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1959), 316–18; Richard B. Gaffin, “By Faith, Not by Sight” (Phillipsburg, NJ: P&R, 2006), 62–64.