How did Arminianism enter the Brethren assemblies?

This text is from a letter written by David Gooding in 2004.

My immediate answer to your question must be that I have no idea whatsoever where it came from.

This state of affairs comes about, I think, because, in Britain at any rate, assemblies do not have some central creed. Secondly, assemblies do not have a Bible college which teaches all its students the assembly position. There was at one stage, I seem to remember, a Bible college in the South of England, set up to attract students from assemblies. Indeed, as it came to the end of my student days in Cambridge, its principal urged me to come and join the Bible college. As far as I know, this college may still exist, but I have not heard much of it in recent times.

Here in Northern Ireland there is a notable example of how strong Calvinism comes to affect churches. When I first came to live here, the Baptist churches were all conservative and evangelical (in contrast to many of them in England), and not marked by a Calvinist position. But later, the Baptist college transferred from Dublin to Belfast, and its first principal in Belfast was a Calvinist. As a result, I am told that almost all Baptist churches in Northern Ireland nowadays take a Reformed position.

For myself, I can say that, looking back to the assembly of which I was a member in my teenage years, there were some older men who occasionally uttered ideas that I now recognize stemmed from strong Calvinism; but it was not taught as a systematic doctrine. Teaching was based on the word of God, rather than as a systematic system.

In my travels, I meet many believers who hold to the doctrine of election, simply because New Testament passages teach election. Normally such people, however, are unaware of what TULIP stands for; and when it is explained to them, their reaction is normally one of repudiation, if not revulsion. I would have to confess that the strong Calvinist system of theology seems to me to be shot through with logical fallacies; and its insistence that regeneration is a sovereign act of God that does not in any way depend upon a person's repentance and faith is inconsistent with a whole run of Scriptures that insist that the reception of spiritual life from God must be preceded by repentance and faith.

Again, as far as I am aware, my own attitude to Calvinist doctrine does not come from any particular source; it is my own personal response, first of all to the study of Scripture, and then to the writing of teachers from both sides of the debate. And that would be true of many teachers in the so-called assemblies in Britain.

It would certainly be true to say that I dislike all labels. We all use labels, of course, for they are a kind shorthand that saves a lot of time in discussions. Hence, people tend to regard me as some kind of Arminian. My protest against that labelling is the same as my protest against the label 'Calvinist'; for labels fail to distinguish the many different shades of opinion that are to be found under either label.

Secondly, these labels tend to obscure the false logic that argues from the general label to a person's individual doctrinal position. As an example of what I mean, I may quote the article on Arminianism from the New Dictionary of Theology, Leicester, England, and Downers Grove, Illinois, IVP, 1988, p. 45. Its final paragraph states that, among the intrinsic tenets of Arminianism which in recent years have become intermingled with Baptist and dispensationalist ideas, particularly in its contact with American fundamentalism, is 'the possibility of a true believer falling from grace with concomitant undermining of assurance.' This verdict seems to me to stem from the conviction of strong Calvinists, that it is only upon the basis of strong Calvinism that a believer can have the assurance of salvation. I am not a strong Calvinist, as you know, but by God's grace I do have complete assurance of salvation.

Let me cite two other cases that bear upon this discussion. After the Civil War in Spain, there arose a Bible school with a strong form of Calvinism. It had such an unfortunate effect among Spanish believers that a Baptist pastor and Mr Ernest Trenchard together wrote a book (Escogidos en Cristo), to help restore doctrinal balance that had thitherto marked evangelicals in Spain. In the early 1980s there arose another wave of strong Calvinism. It came from another Bible school.

In the middle of the 1980s, similar trouble emerged in the Bible school outside Rome in Italy, where the then principal insisted on propagating strong Calvinism in every possible lecture.

My answer, then, to your basic question—'Where and when did the Arminian stream of thinking enter the assemblies?'—would tend to be that it is easier to track down the source of strong Calvinism in assemblies than to pinpoint the source of so-called Arminian theories. Some believers in some assemblies were strongly influenced at one stage by Mr Pink's writings, though the modern generation scarcely know of him. But most believers in most assemblies that I know of are moderate in their views: some with rather bigger emphasis on the Calvinist side, and some with a greater emphasis on the so-called Arminianist side. It is the attempt to over-systematize the Calvinist view that has, in recent years at least, invaded some assemblies and often caused division.

We all, of course, have our systems of theology which, consciously or unconsciously, build up over the years. But in my own studies, I hold it as a basic principle that God knows best how to teach his people; and it is self-evident that he has not chosen to use the method of systematic theology. It follows that, first and last, holy Scripture must be our principal teacher, and our aim must be to let holy Scripture govern and correct our systems, rather than letting our own chosen system govern the interpretation of Scripture.

Now, I fear that these various remarks will not be of much help to you; but if I knew the source from which Arminianism has entered the thinking of assemblies, I would certainly tell you. In my case, it results in the end from my own study of Scripture. I think that is so with the vast majority of believers in assemblies.

With warmest greetings,