Arminianism
The controversy that bears Arminius's name was not a quarrel between Protestants and Rome. It arose inside the Reformed church itself, in the Dutch Republic, among men who had subscribed the same confession and catechism. At its heart lay a single question: when a sinner is saved, whose choice is decisive — God's or man's?
Before Arminius
Calvin had taught divine predestination, the view already held by Augustine: that from eternity God chose some to salvation and passed by others to condemnation. It is worth noticing, as Donald Sinnema does, that this was not a central teaching for Calvin himself. It was some of his followers — Theodore Beza in Geneva, William Perkins in England, Franciscus Gomarus in the Netherlands — who gave predestination a more prominent place and developed it into the stricter form known as supralapsarianism, in which God's decree is considered apart from man's fall.1
The young Dutch church confessed the Belgic Confession and the Heidelberg Catechism, but it was not without critics. The humanist Dirck Coornhert openly attacked the Heidelberg Catechism and pleaded for leniency toward dissenters. Some within the church judged that the best defense against such critics was to soften Calvinist predestination.2
Arminius and Gomarus
Jacobus Arminius (1560–1609) had studied under Beza at Geneva. As a minister in Amsterdam in the 1590s he came into controversy for challenging the teaching of Calvin's successors, advocating a position that placed less weight on divine sovereignty and more on human responsibility in salvation. When he was appointed professor of theology at Leiden in 1603, his views collided with those of his colleague Gomarus, a convinced supralapsarian, and the dispute sharpened. Arminius set out his position most clearly in his Declaration of Sentiments of 1608. He died the following year.3
The argument did not stay in the lecture hall. Sinnema records that even the fishmongers in the Leiden market were arguing over predestination. And because church and state were closely interwoven in the Republic, the theological quarrel became a political one: Johan van Oldenbarnevelt, the leading statesman of Holland, protected the Remonstrant party, while Prince Maurice of Orange, commander of the army, supported the Contra-Remonstrants. For a time the controversy threatened the country with civil war.4
The Remonstrance of 1610
The year after Arminius's death, his followers laid their case before the States of Holland in a document of five articles, the Remonstrance, from which they took their name. In substance:
- God has decreed from eternity to save in Christ those who, by grace, believe and persevere in faith, and to condemn unbelievers.
- Christ died for all and merited forgiveness for all, yet only believers are saved.
- No one has saving faith of his own free will; regeneration by God is necessary for any true good.
- All good is to be ascribed to the grace of God, but that grace is not irresistible.
- Believers are given strength to persevere, but whether they may fall from grace remains to be determined from Scripture.
These five articles set the pattern for every later debate. At a conference in The Hague in 1611, the third and fourth articles were joined, since both parties recognized there was no real controversy on the third; that is why the Canons of Dordt treat the third and fourth heads together. In later years the Remonstrants stated plainly what the articles had left implicit: that election rests on faith foreseen by God, and that a believer may fall wholly from grace.5
The Synod of Dordt
No national synod had met since 1586, and Oldenbarnevelt, wishing to shield the Remonstrants from church censure, had prevented one.6 Only when power shifted to Maurice did the States General convene the Synod of Dordt in November 1618. Fifty-eight Dutch delegates sat with twenty-six Reformed theologians from eight foreign territories, while eighteen state delegates supervised the proceedings. Thirteen leading Remonstrants, headed by Simon Episcopius, were summoned not as members but to have their views judged. They refused to accept the synod as their judge, and after five weeks of procedural wrangling they were expelled. The synod's answer, the Canons of Dordt, took what Sinnema calls a moderate Reformed stance on each of the five disputed points.7
The aftermath was severe. About two hundred Remonstrant ministers were deposed, and more than eighty were banished from the country, though they were permitted to return after Maurice's death in 1625. Under Johannes Uytenbogaert they formed their own church, the Remonstrant Brotherhood, in the fall of 1619.8
What the Remonstrants had framed as five objections the Reformed churches answered as five heads of doctrine — the origin of what are now called the five points of Calvinism. For a side-by-side comparison of the two systems, see Table T8, Calvinism and Arminianism.
