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4) Influence on doctrine of predestination: Reformed orthodoxy had argued a predestinarian doctrine in the context of the doctrine of the Trinity, insisting that election took place "apart from any foreseen merit or faith" but was founded on "a trinitarian construct in which Christ, as God, was acknowledged with the Father and Spirit as the one who predestines." But that needs to be made more precise. Arminius broke up the decree of election into four decrees. According to this scheme, the Father elects the Son as the Mediator at the beginning of the sequence, but Christ does not appear as elector until the end, the fourth decree. This movement corresponds to the distinction between the antecedent and consequent will of God. According to the first decree (antecedent will), God the Father appoints the means by which all who will be saved will be saved; only at the fourth decree (consequent will) does the Son choose those who have believed on him. Two of Muller's statements summarize the issues: "Arminius' grounding of the economic subordination of the Son to the antecedent will of the Father in the concept of a generated deitas or divine essentia is foreign not only to the Reformed and Lutheran views of the Trinity but also to the views of all the great medieval doctors" (p. 160). And, "What Arminius seems to have done is to have taken the side of the patristic argument which argues some subordination in order in the Godhead and to have developed it into the basic principle of his view of the Trinity. This subordination of the Son became, in turn, the lynch-pin of his final statement on the doctrine of predestination. There, the Father, as principium of the Trinity antecedently wills the election of human beings in Christ and consequently gives to Christ the choice of believers as his own" (p. 161).

Dr. Eckleburg:

You really need to deal with your unChristian attitude toward your brothers and sisters in Christ. Oh, and can you actually use the words of Arminius himself (in context and undistorted, if you are capable of that)?

Your argument that somehow a Trinitarian view presupposes “a predestination doctrine” is not logical and does not follow — unles the centerpiece of your doctrinal system IS Predestination, NOT the being and nature of GOD.

Stop being held captive to a philosophical system that binds you, forces you to hate those that diasgree with you and distort their words, and who must argue in circles to prove its own points.