Synod rejects the errors of those . . .
Who teach that God in regenerating man does not bring to bear that power of his omnipotence whereby he may powerfully and unfailingly bend man’s will to faith and conversion, but that even when God has accomplished all the works of grace which he uses for man’s conversion, man nevertheless can, and in actual fact often does, so resist God and the Spirit in their intent and will to regenerate him, that man completely thwarts his own rebirth; and, indeed, that it remains in his own power whether or not to be reborn.
For this does away with all effective functioning of God’s grace in our conversion and subjects the activity of Almighty God to the will of man; it is contrary to the apostles, who teach that “we believe by virtue of the effective working of God’s mighty strength” (Eph. 1:19), and that “God fulfills the undeserved good will of his kindness and the work of faith in us with power” (2 Thess. 1:11), and likewise that “his divine power has given us everything we need for life and godliness” (2 Pet. 1:3).
This error appears in the Remonstrance of 1610 (the Arminian articles)—which affirm that grace is not irresistible. As the authors of the Canons have pointed out previously, faith and repentance have their origin in a prior act of God’s regeneration of the sinner while he or she remains dead in sin (cf. Colossians 2:13). Yet, Arminians insist that faith and repentance spring from the human will even after Adam’s fall. They reject the biblical teaching that faith and repentance are acts of the will made free after a prior sovereign act of God (regeneration). But if tied to an act of the human will (and not prior regeneration) then, of course, Arminians can contend that the grace of God can be resisted until such time as the sinner chooses to take avail of that universal, provisional grace, which God makes available to all. For the Reformed, regeneration precedes faith. For the Arminian regeneration results from faith—understood as an act of the human will—the choice to believe and repent.
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