Jacobus Arminius

Dutch theologian and minister

• Born: October 10, 1560
• Birthplace: Oudewater, Holland (now in the Netherlands)
• Died: October 19, 1609
• Place of death: Leiden, Holland (now in the Netherlands)

Arminius was a Dutch Reformed minister and professor of theology whose views on free will, sin, grace, and predestination made his name synonymous with the larger movement against Calvinism.

Early Life

Jacobus Arminius (ahr-MIHN-ee-uhs) was born in Oudewater, Holland, a town near Utrecht. Many biographical details of his early boyhood are obscure at best and possibly misreported at worst. It seems, however, that his parents were of middling rank.

It is certain that he experienced several losses during his youth: His father died shortly before Arminius was born, and, in 1575, his mother and siblings died in the general massacre in Oudewater at the hands of Spanish troops. Indeed, the struggle of many of the Dutch cities against Spanish domination, the success of the northern provinces in this endeavor, and the subsequent political and religious divisions in the newly independent state of the United Provinces served as a backdrop to Arminius’s entire life.

After his father’s death, the young Arminius’s education was to be sponsored by charitable individuals and, eventually, the magistrates of Amsterdam. His first benefactor was Theodore Aemilius, a Catholic priest who accepted many Protestant ideas, especially about the Mass. He took the boy into his household, where Arminius received an excellent education. Even while Oudewater and nearby Utrecht remained officially Catholic, the movements of many Protestants and Protestant sympathizers in the area can be detected. Arminius himself moved in Protestant circles, and his first choice for university studies was at Marburg, which had been established in 1527 as a Protestant alternative to the Catholic universities in the north and was Europe’s first Protestant university.

Arminius, however, was among the first students to enroll in the newly founded University of Leiden. There, he began serious theological studies and observed firsthand the lines of fissure between Protestants. In the 1570’s and 1580’s, Leiden the town and the university became the scene of controversy between rival Protestant views on various matters. Those under Geneva’s influence criticized the Dutch Reformed Church mostly on the matter of rituals, which they described as Catholic vestiges, and on the matter of church governance, which allowed the involvement of civic magistrates.

In the moderate tradition that had produced Desiderius Erasmus, Caspar Coolhaes wrote the justification for the Dutch church’s practices. In this document, Coolhaes outlined a model of toleration for diverse Protestant views. Coolhaes was condemned by a national synod, a fate posthumously shared by Arminius. Later in life, Arminius recognized Coolhaes as one of his early influences.

In 1582, Arminius left Leiden to study in Geneva, then under the influence of Theodore Beza. At Geneva, Arminius encountered Beza’s belief that before creation God had foreordained which individuals would be saved and which would be damned. Human striving, which could be interpreted as the exercise of free will, while a sign of election, can make no difference in the outcome. This position would later be known as supralapsarianism. Also present in Geneva, however, were others who argued for a less drastic view and for a toleration of diverse viewpoints on this issue. Scholars disagree about Arminius’s own views at this time. One can only note that he was in a position to hear these issues aired at an early stage in his own career.

In 1587, Arminius began his pastoral duties in Amsterdam, and he would continue there for fifteen years. He also began a family around this time, marrying Lijsbet Raeal in 1590. The marriage connected him with merchants and government figures in the city.

Life’s Work

Arminius began to air his own doubts about Calvinist interpretations during his ministry in Amsterdam. He did so in a sermon in which he suggested that sinners can strive to do good. Calvinists argued that the unregenerate sinner is characterized by a lack of striving. From this period until his death in 1609, Arminius would frequently be forced to defend his position before various church governing bodies: classis, consistory, and synod. He had on occasion demanded that a public inquiry be made into his opinions. The reason for this was that his accusers resorted to circulating rumors that were difficult to refute as they were not put into a formal accusation. In 1603, Arminius accepted a position teaching theology at the University of Leiden. Some of his bitterest enemies would emerge from that setting.

Among Arminius’s major works are the “Examination of Perkins’s Pamphlet on the Order and Mode of Predestination,” the “Examination of Gomarus’s Theses on Predestination,” and “A Declaration of the Sentiments of Arminius.” (William Perkins was an English theologian whose writings supported an extreme Calvinist viewpoint; Franciscus Gomarus was a Dutch theologian and Arminius’s fiercest critic during the last years of his life at the University of Leiden.) In these works, in his public statements under examination, and in correspondence, Arminius expresses the basic ideas that have become associated with his name.

At the foundation of all else is Arminius’s claim that individuals have a right to doubt points unclear to their individual conscience. The exact nature of God’s choice of the elect and the damned was a point that Arminius wanted to explore further. From the right to doubt there followed his willingness to accept a diversity of confessions within the Reformed Church. In this case, he had a long, liberal tradition in the Dutch Reformed Church to support him.

Arminius also held views on church government. In this he was consistently Erastian, always insisting that civic magistrates should be involved. Arminius and others feared that the Calvinist insistence on autonomy for the consistory would lead to the same problems that they believed clerical, especially papal, control of the Catholic church faced.

Most important historically, however, were Arminius’s views on predestination. Arminius argued that God’s condemnation of nonbelievers, or the unregenerate, was not a condemnation of particular, predetermined individuals to eternal damnation. Arminius saw Christ’s intervening grace as significant and capable of working to create a believer from a nonbeliever who could then be saved.

Significance

The criticisms Arminius voiced against Calvinist views did not originate with him, nor was he the sole theologian who felt uneasy with the role that Calvinism had assigned to both God and the sinner. As the body of criticism grew and became widespread in Protestant Europe, Calvinist ministers and theologians those who accepted the idea that predestined election or damnation for each individual had occurred before creation and no recourse lay open to the individual to change that destiny began to see the critics of this point of view as a coherent group. In response, the critics began as well so to identify themselves as a group. The examination of these dissenting ideas in various conferences promoted the sense of a coherent movement. The movement became known as Arminianism in 1619, a decade after Arminius’s death, when the international Calvinist Synod of Dort condemned his ideas.

Condemnation did not, however, destroy the movement. In England, it remained a force, at times dominant during the seventeenth century, against Puritans. John Wesley, the founder of Methodism, cited Arminius as an influence. In the Netherlands, the Remonstrants maintained the Arminian position. The issues opened in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries by those who doubted strict Calvinism continued to stir passions and to be debated along much the same lines as they were in Arminius’s time.

Bibliography

Arminius, Jacobus. The Works of James Arminius. Translated by James Nichols and William Nichols. 3 vols. Grand Rapids, Mich.: Baker Book House, 1986. One of the standard translations of Arminius’s works used by scholars.

Bangs, Carl. Arminius: A Study in the Dutch Reformation. 2d ed. Grand Rapids, Mich.: Francis Asbury Press, 1985. Bangs attempts to provide a thorough examination of the development of Arminius’s theological positions in the political, religious, and commercial context of late sixteenth century Holland. He also carefully critiques a number of reports about Arminius’s life and work that he believes to be erroneous.

Harrison, Archibald Harold Walter. The Beginnings of Arminianism to the Synod of Dort. 1926. Reprint. Springfield, Ill.: Scholarly Reprints, 2000. A useful account of the theological points and of the development of a coherent critique of Calvinism.

Tyacke, Nicholas. Anti-Calvinists: The Rise of English Arminianism, c. 1590-1640. New York: Oxford University Press, 1990. This book provides an analysis of the development of an anti-Calvinist position outside Holland, thus demonstrating the international nature of the movement. England is especially important because the movement there is labeled Arminian. The chapter on the Synod of Dort will help the reader carry the story beyond Bangs’s study.