As a Presbyterian, I was disposed to admit the Arminian tendency. The internet was helpful in scouring sources, but it was actually real debates with other people who sparked my interest in this one. I was persuaded by a Calvinist, at some point. Spiritually, it seemed superior. And yet I had reservations of weakness, i.e. shouldn't Christians be meek? Calvinists, I had thought, were anything but that. The idea that this inferiority was something I could use was involved in my early attraction to Arminianism. When you suggest damnation, this most closely characterizes that. It doesn't reflect the free will versus determinism question in philosophy, resulting in a form of compatibility. The divide, at least as I saw it, did not ever "dissolve" or "crystallize" into the Lutheran posture, as much as I admire Hans Kung. What is striking to me is how I had no semblance of an open question about, e.g. Noah or Moses. I never doubted the Flood, etc. The creed was always about Abraham and Isaac, after all. This is the logic whereby Arminianism enters in. The issue with that, has to be an issue with Abraham, i.e. how I wasn't seeing the whole picture. Calvinism might be a stronger stance in dealing with the true whole of Abraham's family tree, including the spat with Hagar and Ishmael. That dynamic (relationship) was another one that I had missed, and it could help to explain some of what seems occluded in Calvinist soteriology. These days I sympathize with it, although I am luke-warm in recounting this history of my childhood Arminianism. But I account for it. And to me this just indicates how I've been fortunately more the Isaac, than the Ishmael. More grace, and less law. And yet, who could have the faith of Abraham? I was baptized as an infant, and I haven't dared to take the Zwinglian stance. Admittedly, as I have grown up, Calvinism has been a protruding vine that has in turn grown on me. Perhaps it requires some pruning today, since these things have suddenly become a bit unruly...