For the Arminian, this passage is a powerful demonstration that grace is genuinely resistible. The Galilean cities received extraordinary grace, miracles performed in their very streets, and rejected it. This proves that even the most powerful divine overtures can be freely refused.
How the passage proves resistible grace
If grace were irresistible, this passage makes no sense. If God’s saving grace cannot be refused, then Chorazin and Bethsaida were simply not given effectual grace: in which case their “refusal” is not a genuine moral failure but the absence of an irresistible divine act. The passage only works if the grace they received was genuinely resistible.
The same cause produces different effects: proving grace is resistible
The logic is decisive: if the same divine provision (mighty works) produces repentance in one city and refusal in another, the grace involved must be resistible. Irresistible grace would produce the same outcome in both.
Jesus establishes a clear principle: accountability is proportional to revelation. Those who receive more light bear more responsibility for walking in darkness.
Revelation received determines judgment severity
This graduated scale of accountability is a fundamental Arminian principle: God holds people responsible in proportion to the light they have received. It directly contradicts the idea that all people are equally unable to respond to God: the passage assumes that with sufficient evidence, people can and would repent.
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Summaries in our words, not quotations.
Jesus demonstrates middle knowledge: He knows what free creatures would do in counterfactual circumstances. This is scientia media in action.
The passage demonstrates omniscience, not a specific epistemological framework. Arminians affirm that Jesus knows counterfactuals as part of His divine omniscience. The passage does not require the three-tier Molinist scheme to make its point.
The theological lesson is about grace and accountability, not epistemology. Reading a Molinist metaphysics into a prophetic woe oracle overintellectualizes a passage whose purpose is pastoral and moral.
The passage establishes degrees of guilt but not obligations on God. God is free to withhold miracles from Tyre and Sidon; His mercy is sovereign.
If God knew Tyre would repent and withheld the means, this challenges divine benevolence. The Arminian asks: if God genuinely desires all to be saved (1 Tim 2:4) and knew exactly what would bring Tyre to repentance, why would He withhold it? The Reformed answer ('sovereign good pleasure') seems to make God's desire to save less than sincere.
The passage assumes genuine human ability to respond. Jesus says Tyre 'would have repented.' This presupposes that repentance is a genuine human response to evidence, not an irresistible divine act performed only on the elect.
The mighty works are sufficient provision: external evidence produces repentance through natural ability.
Arminians largely agree on this passage. Both systems read it as supporting resistible grace and graduated accountability. The difference is that Arminians ground human ability in prevenient grace, while Provisionists ground it in natural ability. On the text itself, the two readings converge.