Arminius: An Anniversary Report

October 10, 1960, marks the four hundredth anniversary of the birth of James Arminius (1560–1609), the Dutch theologian whose name has been given to the Protestant theological tradition of Arminianism. It is appropriate that attention be given again to this late voice of the Reformation whose influence has been so great and about whom so little study has been done. Noteworthy is the fact that in the persistent “Arminian-Calvinist” controversy of the intervening centuries, neither side has had much to say about Arminius himself. He seems to stand somewhat aloof from the later battle, and those who have gone to his writings commonly report that they do not find what they expected to find; that is, they often come to the conclusion “he isn’t really an Arminian.” Some suggest that he was in transition, not completely liberated (or backslidden, as the case may be) from his early Calvinism. Others have held that he was a clever dissembler whose published works were scripturally based and orthodox enough but whose “beliefs were worse than his writings” or who taught many grievous errors in private.

Who was this enigmatic figure? Born in South Holland of simple people, orphaned at an early age, and raised by pious Reformed guardians, he was educated at Marburg, Leiden, Basel, and Geneva, his teacher at Geneva being Theodore Beza, the celebrated successor of Calvin. He was a brilliant student and later distinguished himself as pastor for 15 years of the Reformed churches of Amsterdam. He spent the final six years of his life as professor of theology at Leiden. During his pastoral and professorial years he became engaged in the controversy which gave rise to Arminianism.

AUTHORITY FOR ARMINIUS

He always regarded himself as a Reformed thinker. In common with the earlier Reformed leaders, he opposed the exclusive claims of the Roman church by appeal to the sole authority of the Scriptures. He asserted that “we now have the infallible word of God in no other place than in the Scriptures,” which were written by “holy men of God … actuated and inspired by the Holy Spirit.” He pointed out that the authority of Scripture is not dependent on the testimony of the church nor subject to its dogmas, but that the church “is not a church unless she have previously exercised faith in this word as being divine, and have engaged to obey it.”

Arminius was not unaware of the remaining problems of tradition and interpretation. At this point again he followed the Reformers in giving a certain priority to the patristic church and to Augustine (but expressing misgivings about some of Augustine’s later writings). When it came to the Reformed tradition itself, he professed allegiance to the Belgic Confession and the Heidelberg Catechism, the only Reformed symbols with any sort of binding authorities in the Low Countries at that time. He had a high regard for the exegetical work of Calvin, and in a letter written two years before his death he said, “I recommend that the Commentaries of Calvin be read … for I affirm that in the interpretation of Scriptures Calvin is incomparable …, so much so that I concede to him a certain spirit of prophecy in which he stands distinguished above others, above most, yea, above all.”

Insistence upon the sole authority of Scripture prevented Arminius, however, from ascribing to Calvin the kind of ultimate authority allowed him by the Leiden professor, Francis Gomarus. Gomarus had tried, unsuccessfully, to make Beza’s extreme predestinarian reading of Calvin mandatory in the Dutch churches.

BY GRACE ALONE

Arminius warned that Calvin and the other Reformers were men, and that “they may deserve well of the Church, and yet be entangled in some error: and the illustrious restorers of the Churches perhaps did not spy out everything with which the Church was deformed, and perchance themselves built a superstructure of some errors on a true foundation.”

This implies that Arminius found in the Reformers some points which could stand correction in the light of the word of God, but it also means that he found in them “a true foundation.” This common ground which Arminius shared with Calvin, for one, included the doctrine of the total inability of man as sinner to save himself, with salvation made possible by grace alone. Calvin had said, “When the will is enchained as the slave of sin, it cannot make a movement toward goodness, far less steadily pursue it. Every such movement is the first step in that conversion to God, which in Scripture is entirely ascribed to divine grace” (Institutes, II, III, 5). Arminius said, “Free will is unable to begin or to perfect any true and spiritual good without grace.… I affirm therefore, that this grace is simply and absolutely necessary for the illumination of the mind, the due ordering of the affections, and the inclination of the will to that which is good” (Writings, 1956 printing, II, 472). Calvin, following Augustine, had said that there is no “apportionment between God and man, as if a proper movement on the part of each produced a mutual concurrence.… Whence it follows, that nothing is left for the will to arrogate as its own” (Institutes, II, III, 11). Arminius said, “But this [cooperation], whatever it may be of knowledge, holiness, and power, is all begotten within him by the Holy Spirit” (Writings, I, 529). Both are agreed that grace alone is the ground of salvation.

PREDESTINATION AND CHRIST

Calvin and his disciples had used the biblical figures of election and predestination to express the truth of sola gratia and to combat the Roman doctrine of works. Theological literature often gives the impression that Arminius simply “denied predestination.” It was his well-grounded fear that Beza, and Gomarus, the supralapsarian interpreters of Calvin, were in danger of divorcing the doctrine from Christology and making Christ the mere instrument or means of carrying out a prior, abstract decree. Arminius sought to state the doctrine in the light of Scripture and in integral relation to Christology, and he referred often to Malachi, Romans 9, the “universalist” texts, and particularly the emphasis of Ephesians 1:4 that God “hath chosen us in him.” For his contention that election must be understood “in Christ” he found considerable support also in the Dutch confessions and in Calvin himself.

The “first decree,” then, for Arminius, was that by which God appointed “his Son, Jesus Christ, for a Mediator, Redeemer, Saviour, Priest, and King, who might destroy sin by his own death, might by his obedience obtain the salvation which had been lost, and might communicate it by his own virtue.” Christ is thus not merely the agent but the very foundation of election. The second decree was to receive into favor sinners who are “in Christ” by repentance and faith, and the third had to do with “sufficient and efficacious” means of grace. The final decree was the election of particular individuals on the basis of the divine foreknowledge of their faith and perseverance.

Arminius thus affirmed the doctrine that Christ is the foundation of election and adumbrated the position that He is the content of election. He retained the position that this makes man responsible for his own believing. It would seem, however, that Arminius built his doctrine of election on the notion of foreseen faith, and thereby made man’s decision the cause or concurring cause of salvation (man electing God). It should be noted, however, that Arminius put the latter notion in a position subordinate to the appointing (or electing) of Jesus Christ, and that election in terms of foreseen faith can stand neither alone nor first. Arminians have not always kept this distinction clearly, and the Remonstrance of 1610 itself begins with what Arminius put in fourth place. This tendency, carried to its conclusion, leads to a defection in emphasis from free grace to free will (a point made forcefully by Robert E. Chiles, “Methodist Apostasy: From Free Grace to Free Will,” Religion in Life, Vol. XXVII, No. 3, 1958).

The free grace of God in Jesus Christ did confront sinful man with a “decision-question” for Arminius, but the response of faith was not done in strength which is some sort of residue of goodness. Apart from Christ there could be no response, but the response of faith is nevertheless man’s act, an act to be sure not of achievement and merit but of surrender and acceptance. In this act man gives all glory to God, but for it he himself is responsible. Grace, for Arminius, created freedom and responsibility; it did not destroy or displace them.

SOME CONSEQUENCES

Predestination in Christ was the heart of Arminius’ contribution to Reformed thought, and from it he drew certain consequences or supporting corollaries. Free will, for instance, is bound in the sinner and needs liberation; yet it actually concurs in this liberation. Grace, moreover, is not an irresistible force. There is the possibility of falling from grace, although Arminius pointed out that properly speaking it is impossible for a believer to fall from grace, but that it may be possible for a believer to cease believing. Where Arminius’ contemporaries had made a rigid distinction between common and peculiar grace (as against Calvin’s more cautious distinction between a universal and a special call), Arminius affirmed a continuity of grace in which qualitative distinction between prevenient grace and following grace is erased. Denying, however, a universal election, he pointed out that saving grace is given only to those who are saved, that those who are saved are not so because they will to be saved, but that they are saved because they are in Christ by faith. Commenting on Romans 9:16, Arminius said that “it is not he that wills, or he that runs, who obtains righteousness, but he to whom God has determined to show mercy, that is, the believer.” Finally, Arminius showed a concern for the problems of assurance and holiness. He held to a necessary assurance of present salvation on the basis of faith, but to no present assurance of final salvation. Herein he maintained that “believers” and “the elect” are not interchangeable terms inasmuch as election includes within it the notion of perseverance in faith. These positions have continued to characterize much of subsequent Arminianism, especially in its Wesleyan development.

BEFORE AND AFTER ARMINIUS

Arminius differed with some of his contemporaries, but he was not exactly an innovator. He was thrust into the role of spokesman for a stream of Reformed thought found broadly in Sebastian Castellio, Jerome Bolsec, Heinrich Bullinger, the Second Helvetic Confession, the early Dutch confessions, and the early Dutch pastors under the influence of the Reformed church of Emden. The humanist element in this stream must be acknowledged, but Arminius was perhaps even more influenced by Calvin himself. His articulation of the liberal Reformed tradition was extremely conservative; he attempted to express what was valid in the humanist dissent in the context of a biblical theology of grace.

After his death his influence was felt in a diversity of movements. The Remonstrants retained less and less of his dogmatics, stood more in the liberal tradition, and preferred to remember Arminius for his concern for religious toleration. The Arminian label in England became attached to an already existing opposition to Puritanism and then to any dissent from any Calvinism. In New England looseness of terminology permitted the identification of Arminianism with Unitarianism. The most faithful appropriation and development of the primitive Arminian dogmatics is found in the Wesleys and the early Methodist writers.

Although much has taken place in theology in the intervening centuries, there are many Christians today whose religious thinking has been molded by the Arminian tradition. They would do well to examine the careful work done by the founder of that tradition, and they will find there firm support for resisting an easy-going, culture-Protestantism which confuses man’s work with God’s. And those who call themselves Calvinists will discover that it is too simple to dismiss Arminius as a Pelagian who did not see clearly the issue of sola gratia. They may find themselves closer to him than they had supposed.

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