Off to a Bad Start...

Lately, I’ve been thinking about creating a podcast miniseries exploring the life and times of Jacobus Arminius. Already I have ten episodes in mind, along with an epilogue. It wouldn’t be anything too substantial, but hopefully it will help people place Arminius and his theology in its proper context. Of course, the moment I decided to do this, I went ahead and purchased another book. This time, it was “Arminius and the Reformed Tradition: Grace and the Doctrine of Salvation,” by J.V. Fesko (2022) – and it arrived today.

So needless to say, I began to read it, and….

Already I have my doubts about Fesko’s methodology. He writes this on page ten: “That Arminius labored in the Dutch Reformed Church means that the Belgic Confession and Heidelberg Catechism serve as historical benchmarks with which to compare his soteriology. Was he in or out of accord with these standards?” (Bolded text added by me)

Now, for most people this seems right. Dutch Reformed Church = Belgic Confession and Heidelberg Catechism. Unfortunately, such a perspective fails to capture the fluidity in which these documents were held to in the mid-to-late 1500s. Of course, as the 1600s rolled around, the debates surrounding the confessions and their interpretation intensified- one of the reasons leading to the synod of Dordt- but to use them as the standard for judging whether Arminius’s soteriology was reformed in his Dutch context seems neglectful of their history and reception. Even after the Synod of Emden in 1571, the confessions were not without controversy. The Dutch Republic, after all, was formed out of a mingling of beliefs, teachings, and political ideas- various threads of which can be found in Arminius’s theology and the Reformed Church of his day.  

In the end, Fesko would have been far better off discussing this history in the introduction instead of declaring these confessions as the sole standard to judge Arminius by. Even his conclusion, that Arminius deviated from “Reformed confessional norms,” (5) lacks clarity. What does he mean by norms? Thus, from this introduction alone, this all just reeks of biased results to come. My only hope is that Fesko elaborates on these things before the end of his book. My guess is that he won’t, given how small it is. But oh well.

Anywhoo, here are some quotes that highlight what I'm thinking:

“The text [Belgic Confession] went through various alterations after the Synod of Emden until its final revision at the Synod of Dordrecht in 1619. Thus the modern texts do not represent what was endorsed at Emden, and it is in terms of the original Dutch text presented by van Toorenenbergen that the Emden action must be understood.” (Carl Bangs, Arminius: A Study in the Dutch Reformation, 101)

“Did Arminius sign the Belgic Confession? Of the nine ministers called to Amsterdam before Arminius, only one, Johannes Hallius, signed the Confession. Hallius had come in 1581, just after the Synod of Middelburg, and the consistory requested this of him not because of any doubts about his orthodoxy but in a desire for “peace and unity in the church and in the government of the church.” All the earlier ministers in Amsterdam had been ordained elsewhere; Arminius was the first proponent in that city. One would expect that the signing of the Confession would be put to him, but there is no evidence for it. The practice had evidently been dropped and possibly forgotten in Amsterdam. One must concede to Los that the synodical provision was omitted, but neither sinister motives nor dark subterfuges need be deduced. Neither ministers nor elders nor deacons had raised the question. That in itself is significant.” (Carl Bangs, Arminius: A Study in the Dutch Reformation, 116)

“When Jacob Arminius was a pastor at the Oude Kerk in Amsterdam, he preached through Paul’s Epistle to the Romans. As a result of Arminius’s sermons first on Romans 7 and later on Romans 9 in the early 1590s, a fellow pastor in Amsterdam, Petrus Plancius, complained on both occasions, among other things, that Arminius was teaching contrary to the confessional standards of the Dutch Reformed Church, namely, the Belgic Confession and Heidelberg Catechism. Arminius, in both controversies, stated that he never taught anything contrary to the Confession and Catechism. He did, however, have misgivings about the meaning of the sixteenth article of the Confession, regarding predestination, though he agreed with its actual words. That is, he accepted the words of the Belgic Confession but not his opponents’ interpretation. On both occasions, Arminius was exonerated by the Amsterdam church consistory. At the end of the second controversy, in 1593, the consistory noted that there should be peace until that article of the Confession could be more clearly interpreted at “a general synod of these Dutch churches. The postponement of a decision until it could be discussed in a council is important for at least three reasons. First, the consistory’s handling of Plancius’s complaint against Arminius shows that what Arminius taught did not plainly contradict the confessional standards. Although Arminius’s interpretation of those standards was certainly a minority opinion, it was not obvious to these church leaders that Plancius was right and that Arminius’s teaching was out of bounds. There was no attempt at discipline, no suspension of ministry until the matter could be decided. Second, deferring the matter implies that not every doctrine in the Confession was as clearly settled as it perhaps should have been. Third, the consistory’s response indicates how early and uncontentious was the desire for a national synod to clarify the contested doctrines.” (Keith Stanglin, The Remonstrant Perspective and the Synod of Dordt, 328-330)

“In 1597, the synods of (North and South) Holland petitioned the regional government for a national synod. The States of Holland granted the request and declared that the synod’s main purpose would be revising the Confession, which, on account of its ambiguity had been the source of many disputes. After all, many ministers were subscribing and adding that they were obliged to uphold it only as far as it agreed with the Word of God. The States seemed to recognize that such a qualification rendered the Confession and subscription to it effectively meaningless. … When this mandate for the synod was announced, the synods of Holland agreed. The other provincial synods, however, who did not want to see the Confession revised refused to proceed. Thus, no national synod took place in the 1590s.” (Keith Stanglin, The Remonstrant Perspective and the Synod of Dordt, 330)

“Until the 1550s Calvinism was a minor factor in the Low Countries Reformation except in the case of a few Walloon towns, notably Valenciennes and Tournai, where Calvinism appeared on the scene, and set down deep roots, as early as the mid 1540s. … The Reformed movement in the Netherlands was thus by no means purely Calvinist in origin and, in its early stages, had few direct links with Calvin, Geneva, or with French Protestantism. … From the late 1550s Calvinism emerged as the strongest force in the Netherlands Protestantism. With its clear doctrines and formidable structure it made it possible for Protestantism in the Low Countries to organize into a more powerful movement than had been seen previously. Yet while it partly absorbed, it by no means wholly displaced, the looser, more diffuse tendencies of the past, creating a deep tension between tightly controlled and ‘libertine’ tendencies which was to reman at the heart of Dutch Protestantism throughout the modern era.” (Jonathan I. Israel, The Dutch Republic: It’s Rise, Greatness, and Fall 1477-1806, 101-102; 105)

“William the Silent in commenting on his aims during the course of 1573 did not assert that he was striving to set up a separate state, or claim to be fighting for the Protestant faith. He claimed to be seeking the ‘Liberté du pays tant au fait de la conscience comme de la police’, that is for liberty of conscience and civic autonomy in matters of justice and law and order. In order to secure and safeguard these objectives the rebels would need to extract two main concessions form the king in any forthcoming negotiations: first, Philip must withdraw all Spanish and other foreign troops from the Netherlands; secondly the king must formally concede toleration of the public practice of the Reformed and Lutheran faiths.” (Jonathan I. Israel, The Dutch Republic: It’s Rise, Greatness, and Fall 1477-1806, 183)

“But Reformed preachers now faced what, for them, was a frustrating paradox. The people rejected the old Church. Yet, at the same time, there was but a tepid response to the new. … the main reason for the weak early response to the Reformed Church was lack of confessional zeal and the widespread noncommittal attitude bred by decades of heavy-handed official insistence on Catholic allegiance.” (Jonathan I. Israel, The Dutch Republic: It’s Rise, Greatness, and Fall 1477-1806, 362)

“Nevertheless, according to Bangs, Arminius always considered himself Reformed… What is the explanation for all this? According to Bans and some other historians, the Reformed churches of the United Provinces in Arminian’s time were generically Protestant rather than rigidly Calvinistic. While they accepted the Heidelberg Catechism as their primary statement of faith, they did not require ministers or theologians to adhere to the tents of the high Calvinism being developed in Geneva under Beza. Arminius genuinely seems to have been shocked and surprised by the opposition  mounted by Calvinists against his evangelical synergism; he was used to a type of Reformed theology that allowed for diverse opinions with regards to the details of salvation.” (Roger Olson, Arminian Theology: Myths and Realities, 48)

“In private correspondence the professor corrected his accuser and elicited a mild apology. In public he issued formal declarations affirming his commitments, not only to Scripture but also to the Belgic Confession and to the Heidelberg Catechism. For the peace of the Dutch church, he even offered to resign his post. He was finishing his term as university provost, and there was no inclination from any official quarter to see him step down. So he declared, as he had done on many previous occasions, that when the national synod convened, he stood ready to answer (again!) all questions about his teachings.” (W. Stephen Gunter, Arminius and His Declaration of Sentiments: An Annotated Translation with Introduction and Theological Commentary, 189)

“At this March meeting he agreed that he interpreted Romans 9:18 differently from the margin of the Confession but argued that his brethren often used similar liberty in interpretation. At a later meeting of the Consistory on 27 May he argued that his interpretation of Article 16 of the Belgic Confession, that God saves and preserves all whom he in his goodness has elected in Jesus Christ our Lord, as referring to believers, was acceptable; and the Consistory agreed. So we may assume that the Analysis is a fair representation of his preaching of 1593.” (F. Stuart Clarke, The Ground of Election: Jacobus Arminius’ Doctrine of the Work and Person of Christ, 21)

“He [E. Dekker] notes that Arminius had interpreted ‘all whom God has elected’ in the sixteenth article of the Belgic Confession as referring to believers…” (F. Stuart Clarke, The Ground of Election: Jacobus Arminius’ Doctrine of the Work and Person of Christ, 22)

“So predestination is not of creables, but of creatures. A creable is a non-entity until it is created and becomes a creature, and a non-entity cannot be an object of either election or reprobation, unless is is foreknown as a creature. In saying that it is of creables, Gomarus is going against the definitions in Article 13 of the Belgic Confession and Question 27 of the Heidelberg Catechism.” (F. Stuart Clarke, The Ground of Election: Jacobus Arminius’ Doctrine of the Work and Person of Christ, 134)

"Once Arminius is seen within the context of the early orthodoxy and is viewed as part of the development and codification of doctrine, the complexity of his relationship to Reformed theology becomes more apparent. Working with a similarly wide range of sources from Scripture through Aristotle through Augustine through Thomas to Suárez (and any legitimate sources in between), not to mention the Protestant and particularly Reformed precedents embodied especially in the Belgic Confession and Heidelberg Catechism, Arminius was seeking to broaden the definitions whereas his colleagues were seeking to narrow them. Arminius was offering a system that he thought could be true to a generous interpretation or slight revision of the Reformed standards, and at the same time move toward a reconciliation of divine grace, omniscience, and human freedom. He at least thought that if Gomarus's predestinarian view (supralapsarianism) could fall under the confessional umbrella, his view could also be a Reformed option. Arminius wanted to define "Reformed" broadly as being anti-Pelagian, which he noted does not mean being Gomarist." (Keith Stanglin, Arminius on the Assurance of Salvation: The Context, Roots, and Shape of the Leiden Debate, 1603-1609, 242)