On the matter of man’s condition after the fall, Arminians sees that the sinful of man is not totally depraved, though it is admitted that man is sinful before God. The Arminians sees that man has still some merits in himself in which if he uses it, he can still please God even to the extent to save himself from the eternal punishment because man still has the ability to choose what is best for him. In other words, within the nature of man there is still value which is not corrupted by the fall. For this reason, man still has a free will or an ability to choose good or evil in spiritual matters. Because man has an ability to choose what is good, therefore when man chooses God the Almighty, Creator of heaven and earth, this becomes man’s contribution unto his salvation.
On the contrary the Calvinism looks at man as totally depraved, inability to choose what is good. The very nature of man is corrupted and there is nothing in man that pleases God. Whatever man does, and thinks is always against the will of God. This does not mean that man can not choose to do good things in their lives, community, environment and plan but whatever good things that man chooses it is according to human standard of selfish merits because “man’s nature is corrupt, perverse, and sinful throughout. . . . The corruption extends to every part of man, his body, soul; sin has affected all (the totality) of man’s faculties – his mind, his will etc.” Often man does something good with selfish motives (cf. Jer. 17:9). By nature man cannot do anything good spiritually according to the standard of God’s perfect merits. The apostle Paul quoted Psalms 14 and 53 when he wrote, “there is none righteous, no, not one: there is none that understandeth, there is none that seeketh after God. They are all gone out of the way, they are together become unprofitable: there is none that doeth good, no, not one. . . . there is no fear of God before their eyes” (Rom. 3:10-18).
The question is raised, what has happened to human kind that man cannot choose anything good except for his own selfish purpose and glory? The answer is found in the first book of the Bible. When God created Adam and Eve, they were perfect and sinless and having a free will to choose good or evil, yet they were not having eternal life. Being the first parents of human being, Adam and Eve, were the representative of all human being. In order for them to have eternal life, they were placed under a test in the Garden of Eden. The test was that God placed two special trees in the Garden of Eden, the tree of life and the tree of the knowledge and (Gen. 2:8). And the Lord commanded, “Of every tree of the garden thou mayest freely eat: But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die” (Gen. 2:16-17). Adam had a free will to choose to follow God’s commandment or to disobey God. The Bible said that Adam chose to disobey God by partaking of the forbidden fruit (Gen. 3:1-7). This was the beginning of the corruption of human nature because from this time onwards man became sinful and separated from God. Man is totally depraved and whatever man does is sinful before God. Sinfulness has become the very nature and character of man because of the fall of Adam. Sin was passed from Adam to his children and from his children to the next generation and so on.
Because of the corruption of human nature, man cannot do anything good in order to save his own life because “the natural man is enslaved to sin; he is a child of Satan, rebellious toward God, blind to truth, corrupt, and unable to save himself or to prepare himself for salvation.” The desire of natural man is to do evil and to please his own lusty flesh and ambitions. Man does not have a free will anymore. By nature man is enslaved to do evil. For that reason in order for man to obtain salvation, man needs the grace of God. As Paul said, “For by grace are ye saved through faith: and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God” (Eph 2:8). In another occasion Paul also said, “Not by works of righteousness which we have done, but according to his mercy he saved us, by the washing of regeneration, and renewing of the Holy Ghost” (Tit. 3:5). This was the basis of Calvinism to say that “Faith is not something man contributes to salvation but is itself a part of God’s gift of salvation – it is God’s gift to the sinner, not the sinner’s gift to God.” But the Arminianism on the other hand said, “The lost sinner needs the Spirit’s assistance, but he does not have to be regenerated by the Spirit before he can believe, for faith is the sinner’s gift to God; it is man’s contribution to salvation.” This first point of Calvinism is the most important point of the five points because the rest of the points are subordinate to this point.
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