History And People
Jacobus Arminius was a Dutch pastor and theologian in the late 16th and early 17th centuries. He was taught by Theodore Beza, Calvin's hand-picked successor, but he rejected his teacher's theology that it is God who unconditionally elects some for salvation. Instead Arminius proposed that the election of God was of believers, thereby making it conditional on faith. Arminius's views were challenged by the Dutch Calvinists, especially Franciscus Gomarus, but Arminius died before a national synod could occur.
But lets go back a few centuries for some background... skip and go down to "John Wesley and Gorge Whitefield" if you don't want as a chance for a little confusion. Really good critical info if you have the time to absorb it though... (the reason for the potential confusion is this section goes into some comparisons that could muddy things.)
Augustine and Pelagius
Pelagius was a British monk who journeyed to Rome around 400 AD and was appalled at the lax behavior within churches. To combat this lack of holiness, he preached a Gospel that began with justification through faith alone (it was actually Pelagius, not Luther, who first added the word alone to Paul's phrase) but finished through human effort and morality. He had read Augustine's Confessions and believed it to be a fatalistic and pessimistic view of human nature. Pelagius' followers, including Caelestius, went farther than their teacher and removed justification through faith, setting up the morality- and works-based salvation now known as Pelagianism. [Pelagianism is a theological theory named after Pelagius (ad. 354 – ad. 420/440). It is the belief that original sin (Original sin is, according to a doctrine proposed in Christian theology, humanity's state of sin resulting from the Fall of Man. This condition has been characterized in many ways, ranging fromsomething as insignificant as a slight deficiency, or a tendency toward sin yet without collective guilt, referred to as a "sin nature", to something as drastic as total depravity or automatic guilt by all humans through collective guilt.)did not taint human nature and that mortal will is still capable of choosing good or evil without special Divine aid. Thus, Adam's sin was "to set a bad example" for his progeny, but his actions did not have the other consequences imputed to Original Sin. Pelagianism views the role of Jesus as "setting a good example" for the rest of humanity (thus counteracting Adam's bad example) as well as providing an atonement for our sins...] It should be mentioned that the only historical evidence of the teachings of Pelagius or his followers is found through the writings of his two strongest opponents — Augustine and Jerome.
In response to Pelagius, Augustine adopted a theological system that included not only original sin (which Pelagius denied), but also predestination, limited atonement, and irresistible grace. Critics maintain that part of Augustine's philosophy might have stemmed from his expertise in Greek philosophy, particularly Platonism and Manichaeism, which maintained a very high view of a man's spirit and very low view of a man's body. Against the Pelagian notion that man can do everything right, he taught the notion that man can do nothing right. Thus, he reasoned, man cannot even accept the offer of salvation — it must be God who chooses for himself individuals to bring to salvation... (I will do a post on Pelagianism if it is in demand)
Augustine's teaching on grace was considered the touchstone of orthodoxy within the western church throughout the Middle Ages. Nevertheless, within an Augustinian context, theologians continued to debate the precise nature of God and man's participation in salvation, as well as attempting to work out a place for the church's emerging system of sacraments in the overall scheme of salvation.
Thomas Aquinas, the most influential Catholic theologian of the Middle Ages, taught that, from man's fallen state, there were three steps to salvation:
- Infusion of grace - God infuses grace into the human soul - the Christian now has faith and, with it, the ability to do good - this step is entirely God's work and is not done by man, and once a man has faith, he can never entirely lose it - however, faith alone is not enough for salvation;
- Faith formed by charity - with man's free will restored, man must now do his best to do good works in order to have a faith formed by charity; and then
- Condign merit - God then judges and awards eternal life on the basis of these good works which Aquinas called man's condign merit.
Aquinas believed that by this system, he had reconciled Ephesians 2:8 ("By grace are ye saved through faith, and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God") and James 2:20 ("faith without works is dead") and 2:24 ("by works a man is justified and not by faith only"), and had provided an exposition of the Bible's teaching on salvation compatible with Augustine's teachings.
A second stream of medieval thought, commonly referred to as the Ockhamists after William of Ockham and also including Duns Scotus and Gabriel Biel rejected Aquinas' system as destroying man's free will. The Ockhamists argued that if a man loved God simply because of "infused grace", then man did not love God freely. They argued that before a man received an infusion of grace, man must do his best in a state of nature (i.e. based on man's reason and inborn moral sense). They argued that just as God awards eternal life on the basis of man's condign merit for doing his best to do good works after receiving faith as a gift from God, so too, the original infusion of grace was given to man on the basis of "congruent merit", a reward for man's doing his best in a state of nature. (Unlike condign merit, which is fully deserved by man, congruent merit is not fully deserved, and includes a measure of grace on God's part. Congruent merit is therefore also sometimes called "semimerit". According to the Ockhamists, a gracious God awards an individual with congruent merit when he or she does the best that he or she is able to do)...
Martin Luther's condemnation of "justification by works" clearly condemned Ockhamism. Some proponents of ecumenism argue that the Thomist view of salvation is not opposed to Luther's view of grace, and, since Ockhamism was rejected as Semipelagian by the Catholic Church at the Council of Trent, theology of salvation need not pose a bar to Protestant-Catholic reunion. (The major streams of modern Catholic thought on the theology of salvation are Thomism and Molinism, a theology developed by Jesuit theologian Luis Molina in the 16th century and also held today by some Protestants such as William Lane Craig and Alvin Plantinga.)
However, since the Catholic Church's rejection of Jansenism in the bull Unigenitus (1713), it has been clear that Calvinism could not be accommodated within Catholicism. Arminianism, on the other hand, while it might not square entirely with Catholic theologies of salvation, probably could be accommodated within the Catholic Church, a fact which Arminianism's Protestant opponents have often pointed out. [Augustus Toplady, for example, famously claimed that Arminianism was the "Road to Rome." (In 1586 when Arminius was released from Geneva, he was supposed to travel back to Amsterdam where he was under contract to the city to labor in order to pay back his tuition. Instead, he went straight to Rome for a "vacation"
"The road to Rome":"The Jesuits were moulded into a regular body, towards the middle of the sixteenth century: toward to the close of the same century, Arminius began to infest the Protestant Churches. It needs therefore no great penetration to discern from what source he drew his poison. His journey to Rome was not for not for nothing. If, however, any are disposed to believe, that Arminius imbibed his doctrines from the Socinians in Poland, with whom it is certain, he was on terms of intimate friendship, I have no objection to splitting the difference: he might import some of his tenets from the Racovian brethren, and yet be indebted for others to the disciples of Loyola (Jesuits)"
Add those sentiments to this Jesuit document of 1628:
"Father Rector, let not the damp of astonishment seize upon your ardent and zealous soul, in apprehending the sodaine and unexpected calling of a Parliament. We have now many strings to our bow. We have planted that soveraigne drugge Arminianisme, which we hope will purge the Protestants from their heresie; and it flourisheth and beares fruit in due season. For the better prevention of the Puritanes, the Arminians have already locked up the Duke's (of Buckingham) eares; and we have those of our owne religion, which stand continually at the Duke's chamber, to see who goes in and out: we cannot be too circumspect and carefull in this regard. I am, at this time, transported with joy, to see how happily all instruments and means, as well great as lesser, co-operate unto our purposes. But, to return unto the maine fabricke:--OUR FOUNDATION IS ARMINIANISME.")] This last little quote I ran across on a Calvinist forum. Take it with a grain of salt... I haven't seen it elsewhere, except for the brief mention of Augustus Toplady, in the Wikipedia article above.
Martin Luther and Erasmus of Rotterdam
Martin Luther was an Augustinian monk... In his Disputation Against Scholastic Theology of September 4, 1517, [he] entered into the medieval debate between the Thomists and the Ockhamists by roundly assailing the Ockhamist position and arguing that man by nature lacks the ability to do good that the Ockhamists asserted he had (and thus denying that man could do anything to deserve congruent merit). Modern scholars disagree about whether Luther in fact intended to criticize all scholastics in this Disputation or if he was concerned only with the Ockhamists. Arguing in favor of a broader interpretation is the fact that Luther went on to criticize the use of Aristotle in theology (Aristotle was the basis of Thomist as well as Ockhamist theology) (Here we see the two systems are tied closely together again). If this is the case, it is likely that Luther saw Aquinas' fides caritate formata as merely a more cautious form of Pelagianism (or as Semipelagianism).
Luther continued to defend these views. In 1520, Pope Leo X issued the papal bull Exsurge Domine, which condemned a position which Luther had maintained at the 1518 Heidelberg Disputation, namely that "After the Fall free will is something in name only and when it does what is in it, it sins mortally." Luther subsequently defended the proposition in his Defense and Explanation of All the Articles Unjustly Condemned by the Roman Bull of Leo X (1520), in the process stating that "free will is really a fiction...with no reality, because it is in no man's power to plan any evil or good. As the article of Wycliffe, condemned at Constance, correctly teaches: everything takes place by absolute necessity."
Desiderius Erasmus of Rotterdam, though first sympathetic to Luther, reacted negatively to what he saw as Luther's determinism. In his De libero arbitrio diatribe sive collatio (A Disquisition on Freedom of the Will) (1524), Erasmus caricatures the limitations of free will that he saw Luther espousing. Though at times in the Diatribe, Erasmus sounded like an Ockhamist, for the most part he attempted to espouse a middle course between grace and free will, attempting to avoid on the one hand the errors of the Pelagians and the Ockhamists, and on the other hand, the "Manichaean" error of Luther and other strict Augustinians.
Luther responded with his De Servo Arbitrio (On the Bondage of the Will) (1525) in which he attacked Erasmus vehemently and argued that man was not free to do good. Rather, man's fallen nature is in bondage to sin and to Satan and man can only do evil. The only way an individual can be saved is if God freely chooses to give that person the gift of faith. Luther's position in On the Bondage of the Will became the position adopted by the Protestant movement.
John Calvin
John Calvin did much to redefine and clarify the theological system that began with Augustine; indeed, his work has been repeatedly called "Systematic Augustinianism".
Some scholars of Calvin, such as R. T. Kendall, allege that Calvin disagreed with his predecessors on two points. Firstly, they claim that Calvin believed that Christ died to atone for the sins of the whole world, meaning every individual person in the world, not just the elect. They base this belief on statements which Calvin made in the Institutes of the Christian Religion, in his commentaries on the Bible and in various other works. For instance, in the treatise On The Eternal Predestination of God, Calvin wrote: "It is also a fact, without controversy, that Christ came to atone for the sins 'of the whole world.'" (p. 165). Many Calvinists dispute this understanding of Calvin, maintaining that Calvin must be allowed to define his terms in his own context, and concluding that he actually maintained the doctrine of limited atonement rather than denying it...
Secondly, the claim is made that Calvin was ambiguous about the possibility of losing salvation, sometimes writing in such a way that he seemed to affirm that believers can fully depart from the faith and be lost. Many Calvinists believe that Calvin made a distinction between those who appear to have true faith then fall away, and those who have true faith and hence can never fall away. Hence, they believe that where Calvin seems to be ambiguous about losing salvation, he is actually addressing those who lack genuine faith, not true believers.
These two alleged differences notwithstanding, Calvin worked tirelessly to defend Augustinian predestination (unconditional election), total depravity, and irresistible grace.
Jacobus Arminius
Jacobus Arminius was a Dutch pastor born in 1559, only five years before the death of John Calvin. When 21, Arminius traveled to study at Calvin's academy in Geneva. Theodore Beza, Calvin's hand-picked successor, was the chairman of theology at the university, and admiration flowed both directions in his friendship with Arminius. Beza later defended Arminius by saying "let it be known to you that from the time Arminius returned to us from Basel, his life and learning both have so approved themselves to us, that we hope the best of him in every respect…" In late 1587, at the age of 28, Arminius returned to Amsterdam to fulfil his desire to be a pastor.
When Arminius received his doctorate and professorship of theology at Leiden in 1603, the debate over Calvinism roared back to life. Arminius rose to the forefront of the debate, teaching and defending that Calvinist predestination and unconditional election made God the author of evil. Instead, Arminius insisted, God's election was an election of believers and therefore was conditioned on faith. Furthermore, Arminius argued, God's exhaustive foreknowledge did not require a doctrine of determinism.
Arminius and his followers believed that a national synodshould confer to win tolerance for their views. His opponents, fearing any changes to the confessions of the Dutch Reformed Church (whose creeds were Calvinist), maintained the authority of local synods and denied the necessity of a national convention. When the Dutch State General finally called together both parties, Arminius' opponents (led by fellow professor Franciscus Gomarus) accused him of not only of the teaching doctrines which currently characterize Arminianism (see below) but also of errors on the authority of Scripture, the Trinity, original sin, and works salvation — all charges which Arminius not only denied, but cited agreement with both Calvinism and Scripture.
While Arminius was acquitted of any doctrinal error, the process left him terribly weak. Still seeking to win legal tolerance for his views, he accepted an invitation of the State General to a "friendly conference" with Gomarus but his health caused the conference to end prematurely. Two months later, on October 19, 1609, Jacobus Arminius died.
Quinquarticular Controversy
Quinquarticular Controversy refers to the theological Calvinist-Arminian controversy that was addressed by Dutch Reformed churches at the Synod of Dort in 1618–1619. Quinquarticular (which means, "having to do with five points") refers to points of contention raised by the Arminian party in its publication of five articles of Remonstrance in 1610 and rejected by the Synod in the Canons of Dort, the essence of which is commonly referred to as the Five Points of Calvinism.
(if you want a very different perspective on the synod of Dort, the first few paragraphs of this article are interesting... http://www.truecovenanter.com/reformedpresbyterian/rpcna_testimony_against_arminianism_corrected.html
The Controversy marked the transformation of what was a reasonably loose Arminian movement into a separate, initially persecuted church organization in the Netherlands, and set the stage for the continuation of the predestination-free will controversy to this day in Protestant ranks.
The Remonstrants & Calvinist Reaction
After the death of Arminius, his followers penned a petition to the State General, called a "Remonstrance", which highlighted five aspects of their theology: (1) election was conditional on faith; (2) Christ's atonement was unlimited in extent; (3) total depravity; (4) prevenient and resistible grace; and (5) the possibility of apostasy. Leading influences among Arminius' followers (now called Remonstrants) were Arminius' close friend and Roman Catholic-turned-Reformed pastor Jan Uytenbogaert, lawyer Hugo Grotius, and a scholar named Simon Epicopius. These "articles" were listed above with texts and more detail.
Behind the theological debate lay a political one between Prince Maurice, a strong military leader, and his former mentor Johan van Oldenbarnevelt, Grand Pensionary of Holland and personification of civil power. Maurice, who had Calvinist leanings, desired war with Holland's enemy, Roman Catholic Spain. Oldenbarnevelt, along with Arminius and his followers, desired peace. In the years after Arminius' death, Maurice became convinced that Oldenbarnevelt (and by association, Arminians) had strong Catholic sympathies and were working to deliver Holland to Spain. As insurance, Maurice and his militia systematically and forcibly replaced Remonstrant magistrates with Calvinist ones. Thus, when the State General called for a synod in 1618, its outcome was predetermined. Oldenbarnevelt and Grotius were arrested, and the synod, held at Dordrecht, convened.
This Synod of Dort included Calvinist representatives from Great Britain, Switzerland, Germany, and France, though Arminians were denied acceptance. Three Arminian delegates from Utrecht managed to gain seats, but were soon forcibly ejected and replaced with Calvinist alternates. The synod ultimately ruled that Arminius' teachings were heretical, reaffirming the Belgic Confession and Heidelberg Catechism as its orthodox statements of doctrine. One of the results of the synod was the formation of the Five points of Calvinism in direct response to the five articles of Remonstrance.
After Maurice died, the Remonstrants were accorded toleration by the state and granted the freedom to follow their religion in peace, to build churches and schools...
John Wesley and George Whitefield
The debate between Calvin's followers and Arminius' followers is distinctive of post-Reformation church history. The heated discussions between friends and fellow Methodist ministers John Wesley and George Whitefield were characteristic of many similar debates. Wesley was a champion of Arminius' teachings, defending his soteriology (Soteriology is the branch of theology that deals with salvation. Soteriology is a key factor that distinguishes religion from philosophy.)in a periodical titled The Arminian and writing articles such as Predestination Calmly Considered. He defended Arminius against charges of semi-Pelaganism, holding strongly to beliefs in original sin and total depravity. At the same time, Wesley attacked the determinism that he claimed characterized unconditional election and maintained a belief in the ability to lose salvation. Whitefield debated Wesley on every point (except for their agreement on total depravity) but did not introduce any additional elements into the Calvinists' conclusions set forth at Westminster. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Calvinist-Arminian_Debate ) (Further information: Methodism
John Wesley has historically been the most influential advocate for the teachings of Arminian soteriology. Wesley thoroughly agreed with the vast majority of what Arminius himself taught, maintaining strong doctrines of original sin, total depravity, conditional election, prevenient grace, unlimited atonement, and possibly apostasy.
Wesley departs from Classical Arminianism primarily on three issues:
- Atonement – Wesley's atonement is a hybrid of the penal substitution theory and the governmental theory... Steven Harper states "Wesley does not place the substitionary element primarily within a legal framework...Rather [his doctrine seeks] to bring into proper relationship the 'justice' between God's love for persons and God's hatred of sin...it is not the satisfaction of a legal demand for justice so much as it is an act of mediated reconciliation."
- Possibility of apostasy – Wesley fully accepted the Arminian view that genuine Christians could apostasize and lose their salvation, as his famous sermon "A Call to Backsliders" clearly demonstrates...
- Christian perfection – According to Wesley's teaching, Christians could attain a state of practical perfection, meaning a lack of all voluntary sin by the empowerment of the Holy Spirit, in this life... )
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