To truly grasp Arminius's theology, one must read and understand his disputations. He wrote one hundred and forty of them, many of which span a wide array of theological topics--- more than his other writings. Thus, to neglect them would be a huge mistake.
Therefore, in this post, I hope to introduce you to the disputations: both their context at Staten College and their structure.
Yet those enemies of long ago did something that few enemies, sympathizers, or professional historians bother to do today: to read the disputations of Arminius that are available, and those that are here and now awakened from their slumber. - Keith Stanglin
The Disputations at Staten College
By 1603, academia at Leiden University was guided by two things: the lectio /praelectio and the disputio. In the lectio, or lecture, a professor was expected to lead their students through a careful reading of an important text. Such readings could come from any work that was deemed significant for the student to learn from. This could be Scripture, Lombard’s Sententiae, the writings of Aristotle, or others. Normally, these lectures required very little involvement on the student's part, and as such it was accompanied by the disputatio, or disputation.
As alluded to by the name, disputations were, in a sense, formalized debates overseen by the faculty at the college. In preparation, students were assigned a disputation topic, and on their appointed day they were expected to “address and resolve [the] debated quaestio,” or question (Assurance of Salvation, 38). At the same time, the presenter was required to defend the contents of the disputation from all questions posed against it. This proved to be an effective teaching method at the university. As Keith Stanglin writes, it “was advantageous for [the] training [of] students," for it "required a sharp wit, good memory, and rhetorical skill." It also "made for more thorough assimilation of the knowledge in students’ minds.” (Assurance of Salvation, 38).
Now, this didn't always stand to mean that students had free reign over the contents of their disputations. During Arminius's professorship, the public disputations at Staten College, known as the repetitio, often stood as a testimony to the thoughts and opinions of the presiding faculty member, rather than that of the student. That is why Arminius's sixty-one public disputations are often attributed to him alone. In fact, we see evidence of all of this in a letter written by Arminius to Adrianus Borrius concerning Public Disputation XI:
“I send to you theses de libero arbitrio, which I so composed, because I was of the opinion that they conduce to peace. I placed nothing that I am of the opinion is near to a falsity. But some truths, which I could say, I passed over in silence, knowing that there is the one condition of passing over something true, the other of saying something false; of which the latter is never permitted, the former sometimes, and is indeed very often expedient.” (bold font added)
Of course, one public disputation mentioned by Arminius doesn't prove all of this. For further information about disputation authorship, please check out the following sources:
Boer, William den. “Four Methodological Questions Pertaining to Recent Arminius Scholarship: A Response to Keith Stanglin.” Brill CHRC 92 (2012): 107-120.
Stanglin, Keith D. “Methodological Musings on Historiography (A Rejoinder).” Brill CHRC 92 (2012): 121-129.
Stanglin, Keith D. Arminius on the Assurance of Salvation: The Context, Roots, and Shape of the Leiden Debate, 1603-1609. Brill’s Series in Church History, Vol. 27. Leiden: Brill, 2007: 47-58.
In turn, Arminius also wrote other types of disputations known as Disputationes privatae, private disputations. As the name suggests, these were written behind private walls, perhaps with some student involvement (the information about these disputations are not as well documented). In total, Arminius composed seventy-nine of these private disputations.
Later, Johannes Uytenbogaert (one of his closest friends) would call this work a “brief system of divinity,” and indeed Arminius had intended for his disputations to be an outline for a later systematic. After his death, his children would write the following:
Beside the matter or subject on which he treated with so much faithfulness and accuracy, our excellent father, who was a severe judge of method, thought that he would exhibit the order which ought to be observed in compiling a correct system of Theology. Such a plan he had often and long revolved in his mind; and for this purpose had perused, with very great care, almost all the Synopses or large Treatises of Divinity that had been published. He was in some measure induced to give a representation of this scheme in the following Theses proposed for private disputation. Let the learned decide upon the skill with which he has sketched this outline, which it was his wish to display as an attempt at a Synopsis, for the sake of exercise. O, that it had been the will of Almighty God, to have enabled him to finish, as he had desired, this body of Theological Theses which he was forced to leave incomplete. For it is believed, that upwards of twenty Theses are still wanting to crown the undertaking. By an untimely death, which is a source of the deepest affliction to us, as well as to all good men, his design was frustrated; though the consummation of it would, beyond anything else in this life, have been an object of the fondest gratification to us, his sorrowing offspring. (The Works of Arminius, 392–393).
The Disputation Structure:
The disputation, like other writing forms, followed a common structure. In the repetitio, it was normal to begin a disputation by locating the topic within the disputation series. As Stanglin writes, an example might be: “since topics (p), (q), and (r), have already been handled in previous disputations, the logic of the order requires that (s) now be discussed.” (The Missing Public Disputations, 22).
Next the topic of the disputation would be introduced in either the first or second theses, and its terms would then be defined. Afterwards, in good scholastic fashion, the content of the disputation would take on the most basic questions: Whether something is (an sit), what it is (quid sit), what kind it is (quails), how much it is (quantum), and how it is (quomodo). Normally, the quid sit question would make up the majority of this section.
Concurrently, it was also quite common for the author to use Aristotelian causality for explicating the definitions and for answering the disputation question. At Leiden, these causes were usually ordered by efficient cause, material cause, formal cause, and final cause; but many other expansions to this list were common as well. Stanglin notes that “contemporaries of Arminius distinguished the efficient cause into at least eight possible subsidiary causes” (The Missing Public Disputations, 24). Thus, this constituted the basic structure of the disputation genre.
As a cautionary note, it is important to remember that these disputations were never meant to answer everything. Instead, they were supposed to give a shorter depiction of the topic, limited by the fact that printing space was restricted and that the time given for these oral presentations were also restricted. Thus, when reading Arminius’s disputations, they must be taken for what they do say, and not for what they don’t.
Here’s my outline of Arminius’s Private Disputation I in brackets (This is my rough estimation, by all means I don't claim this to be perfect):
On Theology
[Preface/Introduction to the topic]
I. As we are about again to commence our course of theological disputations under the auspices of our gracious God, we will previously treat a little on theology itself.
[Definition: Negative and Positive Definitions]
II. By the word “theology” we do not understand a conception or a discourse of God himself, of which meaning it would properly admit; but we understand by it, “a conception” or “a discourse about God and things divine,” according to its common use.
III. It may be defined, the doctrine or science of the truth which is according to godliness, and which God has revealed to man, that he may know God and divine things, may believe on him and may through faith perform to him the acts of love, fear, honor, worship and obedience, and may in return expect and obtain blessedness from him through union with him, to the divine glory. [Much of these terms become the foundations for future disputations]
quid sit?:
[Clarifying the Definition: What is the Object of Theology?]
IV. The proximate and immediate object of this doctrine or science is, not God himself, but the duty and act of man which he is bound to perform to God. In theology, therefore, God himself must be considered as the object of this duty.
[Clarifying the Definition: What is the Nature of Theology?]
V. On this account, theology is not a theoretical science or doctrine, but a practical one, requiring the action of the whole man, according to all and each of its parts—an action of the most transcendant description, answerable to the excellence of the object as far as the human capacity will permit.
[Clarifying the Definition: How is Theology Expressed?]
VI. From these premises, it follows that this doctrine is not expressed after the example of natural science, by which God knows himself, but after the example of that notion which God has willingly conceived within himself from all eternity, about the prescribing of that duty and of all things required for it.
Sources:
Arminius, James. The Works of Arminius. Vol. 1, Translated by James Nichols and W.R. Bagnall. Derby, Orton and Mulligan, 1853.
Boer, William den. “Four Methodological Questions Pertaining to Recent Arminius Scholarship: A Response to Keith Stanglin.” Brill CHRC 92 (2012): 107-120.
Stanglin, Keith D. “Methodological Musings on Historiography (A Rejoinder).” Brill CHRC 92 (2012): 121-129.
Stanglin, Keith D. Arminius on the Assurance of Salvation: The Context, Roots, and Shape of the Leiden Debate, 1603-1609. Brill’s Series in Church History, Vol. 27. Leiden: Brill, 2007.
Stanglin, Keith D. The Missing Public Disputations of Jacob Arminius: Introduction, Text, and NotES. Brill’s Series in Church History, Vol. 47. Leiden: Brill, 2010.
Stanglin, Keith D., and Thomas McCall. Jacob Arminius: Theologian of Grace. New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2012.
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