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James Arminius & Christian Freedom
By George Mitrovich

The Synod of Dort marked a critical moment in the history of Western Christendom. The purpose of the Synod was to resolve a theological dispute-was God's grace available to all people or just an elect few?

On the elect side was John Calvin, a brilliant but difficult Frenchman who would establish his theological fame in the Swiss cities of Basel and Geneva. On the side of God's free grace was James Arminius, a Dutch pastor of equal brilliance to his authoritarian rival, but blessed with a more tolerable disposition. By the time the Synod was held, 1618-1619, both Calvin and Arminius were dead, but the controversy had grown.

Four hundred years later it is difficult to grasp that a great convocation of heads of state and leading clergy and scholars would be called upon to resolve a theological question. Do you get it? This was not a gathering to decide some pressing issue involving peace treaties or economic policies or the politics of some ancient régime, but a theological question! Such incredulity muddles the mind of modernity. It seems distant and irrelevant in a time like ours.

When I mention the Synod of Dort and the controversy over Arminian theology in conversations with friends, secular or Christian, I get two responses. The first is one of bafflement, "The Synod of Dork did you say?" The second, "You mean Armenian, don't you?"

Let me explain. When I was a teenager, the Church of the Nazarene played a significant role in my life. It was in that denomination that I first fully understood that Christ died for all. The Nazarenes, who broke away from the Methodist Church in the early part of the 20th century, were thoroughly committed to Wesleyan beliefs. The founders of the Church of the Nazarene, many of whom were prominent Methodist clergymen, saw Methodism being swept along on a rising tide of theological liberalism; they saw not only the teachings of John Wesley minimized, but the theology of James Arminius forgotten. The Nazarenes, socially and theologically conservative, remain loyal to Wesley, but it is Arminius that has hold on their greater loyalty. Which is understandable-Wesley was an Arminian.

I was a high school student when I first met Dr. H. Orton Wiley, then president of Pasadena (Nazarene) College. He was the most important theologian in the Church of the Nazarene, one whose credibility as a scholar extended to the wider world of theological thought. It was obvious that Dr. Wiley was a kindly man, but even I, a mere callowed youth, also understood he was a person of transcendent intelligence. While my contacts with him were limited, he helped me to understand the importance of James Arminius to the Christian church. The other Nazarene scholar I met was Dr. Carl Bangs, who later taught at St. Paul's School of Theology in Kansas City, a United Methodist seminary. Dr. Bangs was regarded as one of the leading authorities on Arminius, and wrote a critically acclaimed book about him. His absorption with Arminius made a lasting impression upon me.

But as often happens when you're young, an attraction or fascination with individuals and their ideas is seldom fixed. It preoccupies you for a while, but then you move on. So it was with Arminius and me. Which brings me to a little book published by Abingdon that I bought many years ago. It's a collection of lectures on the life of Arminius delivered at a symposium in the Netherlands, which gathered to celebrate his life. For the longest time the book just sat on my bookshelf. I would pick it up on occasions, read several pages, and promptly forget it. I finally decided it was time to either read the book or give it to someone who would. I read it, and I began to see Arminius in ways I had not previously appreciated.

To get a better grip on Arminius, I went online to Google, the great search engine of the Internet. I typed in Arminius' name. Approximately 12,000 references came up! 

James Arminius was born in Oudewater, a small town near Utrecht in Holland, in the year 1559. His father died when he was an infant. His widowed mother would care for Arminius, his brother, and sister, but the circumstances of their life were extremely difficult. Fortunately, Arminius came under the patronage of a wealthy man who saw in him great potential. While he was away from home to study, tragedy struck his family. His mother, brother, and sister were slaughtered by the Spanish, the innocent victims of yet another Continental war that destroyed their native town. Arminius would recover from this terrible blow and continue his studies. He married the daughter of one of Holland's most influential men and became a minister in Amsterdam, where his preaching was hugely popular. Thirteen years later he would be offered a chair on the faculty at the University of Leiden. There was a great irony in this. Leiden was a Calvinist stronghold. But it was here that his fame and notoriety would ascend, his following would grow, controversy would rage-and even civil war was threatened.

To know Arminius is to know the freedom we celebrate in Jesus Christ, for his theology is a theology of liberation. It raises each person to the same level. It says that no matter who you are, you have equal standing in the eyes of God. King or commoner it matters not. God loves you just the same. When Christ died on the cross, he died for you. Redemption's story is about the whole world-about every man, every woman, and every child; or as the great hymn expresses it, "Where ere the sun doth its successive journeys run."

St. Augustine's idea that God's grace is only for the elect, that there were those predestined to salvation before time began, captured the mind and thought of Calvin. It was a doctrine that divided mother from father, brother from sister, friend from friend. It was a doctrine that had taken hold of much of Christian thought, and its consequences were vast-politically, socially, morally, and theologically. Martin Luther had shaken the foundations of the Christian world, but Calvin would take Luther's idea that salvation comes by faith and not works, and turn it into a narrow-mindedness that would set neighbor against neighbor-and in time would burn Servetus at the stake.

Into this depressed world, the world as Calvin saw it, a world of the eternally blessed and the eternally blighted, came Arminius, who said, more or less, "Just a minute, Dr. Calvin, I think you've got it wrong. You have, by your theology, reduced the death of our Lord upon the cross to a drama of the redeemed by allocation; you have said to half the world you don't matter, hell is your only future, and there's nothing you can do about it-nothing! You, Dr. Calvin, have taken John 3:16 and proclaimed it by your teachings a 'perversion of the Gospel.'"

Can you imagine the effect of such a radical idea? That God's grace was for everyone, coming at a time when there was a great divide among people-prince and peasant, rich and poor, the haves and everyone else. The consequences of so dramatic a doctrine, taught by Arminius in seminary classes, preached from pulpits, and proclaimed in lengthy essays and theological papers in the Netherlands, was immediate. A challenge had been raised against Calvin's doctrine of election. Arminius' idea of free grace left unanswered had the potential to rock the political, social, and religious foundations of Western Europe. It was heresy and it had to be dealt with.

Thus we come to the Synod of Dort, held in the Dutch city of Dordrecht. The delegates to the Synod came from across Europe, where great concern had arisen over Arminius' "heresy" and the dangers it posed. King James I of England-who gave history the King James Bible-chose the Anglican Church's greatest scholars to attend the Synod, where they soon took a leading role. In long and often rancorous sessions over nearly two years, the delegates heard the arguments for and against Calvin and Arminius. In the end they voted to affirm Calvin's position on election and to reject Arminius' claim of God's free grace. As a result of that decision, there began a campaign against the followers of Arminius. Ministers who embraced Arminius lost their pulpits. Workers who accepted Arminius' view of salvation were denied the right to work for the state. Some Arminians lost their lives; martyred because they dared to believe that Christ died for them.

During this persecution, some disciples of Arminius left the Continent and settled in Lincolnshire County in England. It was there in 1703 John Wesley was born in a parsonage at Epworth. In due course Wesley would come under the influence of Arminius' theology.

He would later write a famous essay on the question, "What Is an Arminian? Answered by a Lover of Free Grace." In that essay Wesley wrote:

"But there is an undeniable difference between the Calvinists and Arminians.. The Calvinists hold, First, God has absolutely decreed, from all eternity, to save such and such persons, and no others; and that Christ died for these, and none else. The Arminians hold, God has decreed, from all eternity, touching all that have the written word, 'He that believeth shall be saved: He that believeth not, shall be condemned:' And in order to this, 'Christ died for all.'

"The Calvinists hold, Secondly, that the saving grace of God is absolutely irresistible; that no man is any more able to resist it, than to resist the stroke of lightning. The Arminians hold, that although there may be some moments wherein the grace of God acts irresistibly, yet, in general, any man may resist, and that to his eternal ruin, the grace whereby it was the will of God he should have been eternally saved.

"The Calvinists hold, Thirdly, that a true believer in Christ cannot possibly fall from grace. The Arminians hold, that a true believer may 'make shipwreck of faith and a good conscience;' that he may fall, not only foully, but finally, so as to perish forever."

Wesley was disturbed by the vitriol that separated Calvinists from Arminians; for it divided him from, among others, his friend and colleague, George Whitfield. He instructed his followers not to speak ill of John Calvin in public (counsel I have shamelessly ignored). I can't help but wonder, however, if a contemporary Wesley would embrace so tolerant a view of a man whose very theology, if true, might mean that neither Arminius or Wesley himself qualified for God's redeeming grace? If they were shut out, what chance does that give you or me? It seems to me that Arminius' views on theological freedom helped create a world that treasures the ideal of equality, as well as religious and political freedom.

I have endeavored here to affirm my Arminian beliefs, to place in context the greatness of this man, about whom too few United Methodists are conversant. (When was the last time any United Methodist minister you know mentioned James Arminius?) Arminius has been huge in my life and thought. His influence is present in ways I barely fathom. I encourage you to learn more about that lovely man from the Netherlands, who dared to believe, against the dominant thinking of his time, that Christ died for all.

George Mitrovich, a United Methodist layman, is President of The City Club of San Diego and The Denver Forum, two of America's leading public forums.



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