Arminian theology espouses the central role of humanity’s free will in cooperation with God’s grace for justification and salvation. Roman Catholics and some Protestants like the Methodists subscribe to this notion.
Arminianism is based on the assumption that human beings have “free will.” We only think and believe that we do, a probable result of neurological hijacking of the mind spewing forth a self-comforting delusion for evolutionary purposes. But this “free will” assumption lacks empirical evidence. Modern neuroscience debunks the myth of a central processing agent in our neurobiological machinery that makes free choices, controls, and executes all of our cognitive, sensory, affective, volitional, and behavioural activities.
In other words, there is no central controlling self or agent. Hence, no free will. Everything that comes out of this human organism is predetermined or at best habituated by past activities. Humans at the very most have conditioned will that is totally dependent on past causes and conditions. The hubris of “free will” is simply that — hubris. In truth, our minds and hearts are captive to the mental afflictions and defilements of greed, hatred, and delusion. From our own side, no freedom exists. Only grace from beyond the self and its machinery can evoke anything good, true, and beautiful in us.
This grace-alone view of free will is consistent with the Buddhist view. For Buddhists see and know how entrapped sentient beings are in their defilements of greed, hatred, and delusion, embroiled in craving and ignorance. As a result, all choices and decisions made by deluded minds together with their actions of thought, speech, and body are necessarily tainted with self-grasping and afflictive states of mind, however subtle. This is akin to how Calvinists see our human condition.
Hence, sentient beings are far from being free in their choices — they are inescapably conditioned by the karmic momentum of past habits and conditioning. Only in a fully enlightened mind is their any chance of real freedom of choice. But only a minuscule percentage of humanity throughout history is truly free in that sense. And such freedom lies beyond the grip of the egoic body and mind contaminated by the three poisons. Such freedom comes from
the beyond that we can call nibbanadhatu — the deathless element of nibbana, a “blowing out” of all defilements of the mind-heart. In another words, that is grace beyond all self-occupation.
All in all, Arminian free will may be comforting massage therapy for the ego but it fails in reality — because such uncritical rhetoric for our big fat pride is simply out of touch with reality. The decrepit state of our world is testament to that.
In the words of Paul the apostle of grace, who reminds us again and again of the freedom that Christ has purchased for us:
“For freedom Christ has set us free. Stand firm, therefore, and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery.”
Galatians 5:1 NRSV-CI
https://bible.com/bible/2015/gal.5.1.NRSV-CI
Let us not subject ourselves again to the burden and yoke of egoic self-striving manifest in religious dogmatism and sacramentalism. That is nothing but slavery. Exalt Christ, not ritualism.
