The Methodist Quarterly Review
July, 1879
ART. I.-ARMINIANISM AND ARMINIUS.
[The above article is here inserted from "Johnson’s Universal
Cyclopædia,’ by courtesy of the proprietor of that work, A. J. Johnson, Esq.]
ARMINIANISM, as the customary antithesis to Calvinism, is, within the limits of the
evangelical doctrines, the theology that tends to freedom in opposition to the theology of
necessity, or absolutism. This contrast rises into thought among all nations that attain
to reflection and philosophy. So in Greek and Roman thinking, Stoicism and all
materialistic atheism held that mind, will, is subject to just as fixed laws in its
volitions as physical events are in their successions. When, however, men like Plato and
Cicero rose to a more transcendent sense of moral responsibility, especially of eternal
responsibility, they came to say, like Cicero, "Those who maintain an eternal series
of causes despoil the mind of man of free-will, and bind it in the necessity of
fate."
Theistic fatalism, or Predestination, consists in the predetermination of the Divine
Will, which, determining alike the volitions of the will and the succession of physical
events, reduces both to a like unfreedom; but those who hold Predestination very uniformly
hold also to volitional necessity, or the subjection of will in its action to the control
of strongest motive force. And as the Divine Will is held subject to the same law, so
Necessity, as master of God, man, and the universe, becomes a universal and absolute Fate.
This doctrine, installed by Saint Augustine, and still more absolutely by John Calvin, in
Christian theology, is from them called Augustinianism, or, more usually, Calvinism.
In opposition to this theology, Arminianism maintains that in order to true responsibility,
guilt, penalty, especially eternal penalty, there must be in the agent a free-will;
and in a true responsible free-will the freedom must consist in the power, even in the
same circumstances and under the same motives, of choosing either way. No man can
justly be eternally damned, according to Arminianism, for a choice or action which he
cannot help. If fixed by Divine decree or volitional necessity to the particular act, he
cannot be held responsible or justly punished. In all such statements, however, it is
presupposed, in order to a just responsibility, that the agent has not responsibly
abdicated or destroyed his own power. No agent can plead in bar of responsibility any
incapacity which he has freely and willfully brought upon himself. It is also to be
admitted that there may be suffering which is not penalty-finite sufferings for which
there are compensations, and for which every one would take his chance for the sake of
life. But eternal suffering, for which there is no compensation, inflicted as a judicial
penalty on the basis of justice, can be justly inflicted only for avoidable
sin. If Divine decree or volitional necessity determine the act, it is irresponsible, and
judicial penalty is unjust.
Arminianism also holds that none hut the person who freely commits the sin can be
guilty of that sin. One person cannot be guilty of another person’s sin. A tempter
may be guilty of tempting another to sin, but then one is guilty of the sin, and the other
of solely the sin of temptation. There can thus be no vicarious guilt: and as punishment,
taken strictly, can be only infliction for guilt upon the guilty, there can
literally and strictly be no vicarious punishment. If innocent Damon die for Pythias
guilty of murder, Damon is not guilty because he takes Pythias’ place in dying, and
his death is not to him a punishment, but a suffering, which is a substitute for
another man’s punishment. The doer of sin is solely the sinner, the guilty, or the
punished. These preliminary statements will elucidate the issues between Calvinism and
Arminianism on the following points :-
1. Foreodination.-Calvinism affirms that God does, unchangeably and eternally,
foreordain whatsoever comes to pass. That is, God, from all eternity, predetermines not
only all physical. events, but all the volitions of responsible agents. To this
Arminianism objects that the predetermination of the agent’s volitions destroys the
freedom of his will; that it makes God the responsible predeterminer and willer of sin;
and that it makes every sinner to say that his sin accords with the Divine Will, and,
therefore, so far as himself is concerned, is right. It makes God first decree the sin,
and then punish the sinner for the sin decreed. The Arminian theory is this: God does,
from all eternity, predetermine the laws of nature and the succession of physical and
necessary events; but as to free moral agents, God, knowing all possible futurities, does
choose that plan of his own conduct which, in view of what each agent will ultimately in
freedom do, will bring out the best results. His system is a system of his own actions.
And God’s predeterminations of his own acts are so far contingent as they are based
on his prerecognition of what the agent will freely do; yet as his omniscience knows the
future with perfect accuracy, so he will never he deceived nor frustrated in his plans and
providences.
Some Arminians deny God’s foreknowledge, on the ground of the intrinsic
impossibility of a future contingency being foreknown. As the performance 0f a
contradictory act is impossible, intrinsically, even to Omnipotence, so, say they, the
knowability of a future contingency, being an essential contradiction, is impossible even
to Omniscience. A contradiction is a nothing; and it is very unnecessary to say in behalf
of God’s omnipotence that he can do all things, and all nothings too. So it is
equally absurd to say in behalf of his omniscience that he knows all things and all
nothings too. The exclusion of contradictions does not limit God’s omnipotence
or omniscience, but defines it. Arminians do not condemn this reasoning, but generally
hold that their theory is maintainable against Calvinism on the assumption of
foreknowledge. They deny, as against the Calvinist, that foreknowledge has any influence
upon the future of the act, as predetermination has. Predetermination fixes the
act-foreknowledge is fixed by the act. In foreordination God determines the act as
he pleases; in foreknowledge the agent fixes the prescience as he pleases. In the former
case God is alone responsible for the creature’s act; in the latter case God holds
the creature responsible, and a just divine government becomes possible. Yet most
Arminians, probably, would say, with the eminent philosopher, Dr. Henry More, If the
divine foreknowledge of the volitions of a free agent contradicts the freedom, then the
freedom, and not the foreknowledge, is to be believed.
2. Divine Sovereignty.-Calvinism affirms that if man is free God is not a
sovereign. Just so far as man is free to will either way, God’s power is limited.
Arminians reply that if man is not free, God is not a sovereign, but sinks to a mere
mechanist. If man’s will is as fixed as the physical machinery of the universe, then all
is machinery and not a government, and God is a machinist and not a ruler. The higher
man’s freedom of will is exalted above mechanism, so much higher is God elevated as a
sovereign. Here, according to Arminians, Calvinism degrades and destroys God’s
sovereignty, and Arminianism exalts it; that the freedom of man no more limits God’s
power than do the laws of nature by him established; that in both cases, equally, there is
simply a self-limitation by God 6f the exercise of his power; that Arminianism holds to
the absoluteness of God’s omnipotence just as truly as Calvinism, and to the grandeur
of his sovereignty even more exaltedly.
3. Imputation of Adam’s Sin. -Calvinism affirms that Adam’s posterity
is truly guilty of Adam’s sin, so as to be eternally and justly punishable
therefor without a remedy. As guilty of this sin, God might have the whole race
born into existence under a curse, without the power or means of deliverance,-and
consigned to eternal punishment. Upon this Arminians look as a dogma violative of the
fundamental principles of eternal justice. They deny that guilt and literal punishment
can, in the nature of things, be thus transferred. Their theory is, that upon Adam’s
sin a Saviour was forthwith interposed for the race as a previous condition to the
allowance of the propagation of the race by Adam, and a provision for inherited
disadvantages. Had not a Redeemer been provided, mankind, after Adam, would not have been
born. The race inherits the nature of fallen Adam, not by being held guilty of his
sin, but by the law of natural descent, just as all posterity inherit the
species-qualities, physical, mental, and moral, of the progenitor. Before his fall the
presence of the Holy Spirit with Adam in fullness supernaturally empowered him to perfect
holiness-the tree of life imparted to him a supernatural immortality. Separated from both
these, he sunk into a mere nature, subject to appetite and Satan. The race in Adam,
without redemption, is totally incapable of salvation; yet under Christ it is placed upon
a new redemptive probation, is empowered by the quickening Spirit given to all, and
through Christ may, by the exercise of free agency, attain eternal life.
4. Reprobation.-Of the whole mass of mankind thus involved in guilt and
punishment for sin they never actually committed, Calvinism affirms that God has left a
large share "passed by" -that is, without adequate means of recovery, and with
no intention to recover them-and this from the "good pleasure of his will" and
for a display of his "glorious justice." The other portion of mankind God does,
from "mere good pleasure," without any superior preferability in them,
"elect" or choose, and confers upon them regeneration and eternal life, "
all to the praise of his glorious grace." The Arminians pronounce such a proceeding
arbitrary, and fail to see in it either "justice" or "glorious grace."
The reprobation seems to them to be injustice, and the "grace," with such an
accompaniment, unworthy the acceptance of honorable free agents. Election and reprobation,
as Arminianism holds them, are conditioned upon the conduct and voluntary character of the
subjects. All submitting to God and righteousness, by repentance of sin and true
self-consecrating faith, do meet the conditions of that election; all who persist in sin
present the qualities upon which reprobation depends. And as this preference for the
obedient and holy, and rejection of the disobedient and unholy, lies in the very nature of
God, so this election and reprobation are from before the foundations of the world.
5. Philosophical or Volitional Necessity.-Calvinism maintains the doctrine that
all volitions are determined and fixed by the force of strongest motive, just as the
strokes of a clock-hammer are fixed and determined by the strongest force. The will can no
more choose otherwise in a given case than the clock-hammer can strike otherwise. There is
no "power of contrary choice." Calvinism often speaks, indeed, of "free
agents," "free-will," "self-determining power," and
"will’s choosing by its own power;" but bring it to analysis, and it will
always, say the Arminians, be found that the freedom is the same as that of the
clock-hammer-the freedom to strike as it does, and no otherwise. Arminianism affirms that
if the agent has no power to will otherwise than motive-force determines, any more than a
clock-hammer can strike otherwise, then there is no justice in requiring a different
volition any more than a different clock-stroke. It would be requiring an impossibility.
And to punish an agent for not performing an impossibility is injustice, and to punish him
eternally, an infinite injustice. Arminianism charges, therefore, that Calvinism destroys
all just punishment, and so all free volition and all divine government.
6. Infant Damnation.-Holding that the race is truly guilty, and
judicially condemnable to endless torment for Adam’s sin, Calvinism necessarily
maintains, according to Arminians, that it is just for God to condemn all infants to
eternal punishment, even those who have never performed any moral act of their own. This
was held by Augustine, and wherever Calvinism has spread this has been a part of the
doctrine, more or less explicitly taught. Earlier Calvinists maintained against the
Arminians that there is actual reprobation-that is, a real sending to hell-as well as
particular election of infants. Arminianism, denying that the race is judicially guilty,
or justly damnable for Adam’s sins, affirms the salvation of all infants. The
individual man as born does, indeed, irresponsibly possess within his constitution that
nature which will, amid the temptations of life, commence to sin when it obtains its
full-grown strength. He is not, like the unborn Christ, "that holy thing." There
is, therefore, a repugnance which God and all holy beings have toward him by contrariety
of nature, and an irresponsible unfitness for heaven and holy association. If born
immortal, with such a nature unchangeable, he must be forever unholy, and forever
naturally unhappy under the divine repugnance. Under such conditions Divine Justice would
not permit the race, after the fall, to be born. But at once the future Incarnate Redeemer
interposes, restores the divine complacency, and places the race upon a new probation. Man
is thereby born in a "state of initial salvation," as Fletcher of Madeley called
it, and the means of final salvation are amply placed within the reach of his free choice.
7. Pagan Damnation.-On its own principle, that power to perform is not necessary
in order to obligation to perform, Calvinism easily maintains that pagans, who never heard
of Christ, are rightly damned for want of faith in Christ. They may be damned for original
sin, and for their own sin, and for unbelief in Christ, without any Saviour. Arminianism,
on the contrary, maintains that there doubtless are many in pagan lands saved even by the
unknown Redeemer. They, not having the law, are a law unto themselves. Nay, they may have the
spirit of faith, so that were Christ truly presented he would be truly accepted. They
may have faith in that of which Christ is the embodiment, like the ancient worthies
enumerated in Heb. xi. There may not be as great differences in the chances for salvation
in different lands as Calvinism assumes. Where little is given, much is not required.
Arminianism holds that no one of the human race is damned who has not had full chance for
salvation. Missions are none the less important in order to hasten the day when all shall
be converted. If that millennial age shall come, and be of long duration, Arminianism
hopes that the great majority of the entire race of all ages may be finally saved.
8. Doctrines of Grace.-Calvinism maintains that the death of Christ is an
expiation for man’s sin: first, for the guilt of men for Adam’s sin, so that it
is possible for God to forgive and save; and second, for actual sin-that thereby the
influence of the Spirit restores the lapsed moral powers, regenerates and saves the man.
But these saving benefits are reserved for the elect only. Arminianism, claiming a
far richer doctrine of grace, extends it to the very foundations of the existence of
Adam’s posterity. Grace underlies our very nature and life. We are born and live
because Christ became incarnate and died for us. All the institutes of salvation-the
chance of probation, the Spirit, the Word, the pardon, the regeneration, the resurrection,
and the life eternal-are through him. And Arminianism, against Calvinism, proclaims that
these are for ALL. Christ died for all alike; for no one man more than for any
other man, and sufficient grace and opportunity for salvation is given to every man.
Calvinism maintains the irresistibility of grace; or, more strongly still, that grace
is absolute, like the act of creation, which is called irresistible with a
sort of impropriety from the fact that resistance in that connection is truly unthinkable.
Against this Arminians reply that will, aided by prevenient grace, is free even in
accepting pardoning grace; that though this acceptance is no more meritorious than a
beggar’s acceptance of an offered fortune, yet it is accepted freely and with full
power of rejection, and is none the less grace for that.
9. Justifying and Saving Faith.-Faith, according to Calvinism, is an acceptance
of Christ wrought absolutely, as an act of creation in the man, whereby it is as
impossible for him not savingly to believe as it is for a world to be not created or an
infant to be not born. And as this faith is resistlessly fastened in the man, so it is
resistlessly kept there, and the man necessarily perseveres to the end. Faith, according
to Arminianism, is, as a power, indeed the gift of God, but as an act it is the
free, avoidable, yet really performed act of the intellect, heart, and will, by which the
man surrenders himself to Christ and all holiness for time and eternity. In consequence of
this act, and not for its meritorious value or its any way compensating for or earning
salvation, it is accepted for righteousness, and the man himself is accepted, pardoned,
and saved. And as this faith is free and rejectable in its beginning, so through life it
continues. The Christian is as obliged, through the grace of God assisting, to freely
retain it as first freely to exercise it. It is of the very essence of his probationary
freedom that he is as able to renounce his faith and apostatize as to reject it at first.
10. Extent of the Atonement and Offers of Salvation.-Earlier Calvinism maintained that
Christ died for the elect alone; later Calvinism affirms that he died for one and-all, and
so offers salvation to all on condition of faith. But Arminianism asks, With what
consistency can the atonement be said to be for all when, by the eternal decree of God, it
is foreordained that a large part of mankind shall be excluded from its benefits? How also
can it be for all when none can accept it but by efficacious grace, and that grace is
arbitrarily withheld from a large part? How can it be for all when God has so fastened the
will of a large part of mankind, by counter motive-force, that they are unable to accept
it? The same arguments show the impossibility of a rightful offer of salvation to all,
either by God or by the Calvinistic pulpit. How can salvation be rationally offered to
those whom God by an eternal decree has excluded from salvation? What right to exhort the
very men to repent whom God determines, by volitional necessity, not to repent? What right
to exhort men to do otherwise than God has willed, decreed, and foreordained they shall
do? If God has decreed a thing, is not that thing right? What an awful sinner is the
preacher who stands up to oppose and defeat God’s decrees? If a man is to be damned
for fulfilling God’s decrees, ought not that imaginary God to be, a fortiori, damned
for making such decree? If a man does as God decrees, ought he not to be by God approved
and saved? And since all men do as God decrees, wills, and determines they shall do, ought
not all men to be saved, so that the true theory shall be Universalism? How can grace be
offered to the man whom God had decreed never to have grace? or faith be preached to those
to whom God has made faith impossible? or conditions proposed to those from whom God
withholds the power of performing conditions? Hence, the Arminian affirms that in all
public offers of a free or conditional salvation to all, the Calvinistic pulpit
contradicts its own creed. *[The following paragraph, which was interpolated into the text
by some hand to us unknown, we insert as a foot-note. It hardly need be said that we do
not concur with its views, invalidating as it does the great share of the foregoing
argument:-
Such is an outline of the usual argument on the subject; and it is not difficult to
determine on which side the logic predominates. If we consider the question from its more
abstract more metaphysical premises, the Arminian theory has equally the advantage. Most
of the difficulties of this and all similar inquiries doubtless arise from the limitations
of our faculties, or, rather, of our language. We unwarrantably attribute to the Infinite
Mind the modes of thought which are peculiar to our finite intellects. The most subtle
perplexity of this controversy grows out of the idea of time-its past, present and
future-and the attempt to reconcile foreknowledge with contingency or free will. But what
is time? It is no entity, no substance, like iron, air, oxygen. It is, as Kant teaches,
subjective, not objective. It is but a habit of the mind, an association of thought,
suggested, as Locke says, by the succession of ideas, and arising from the finite
limitations of our faculties. We cannot, therefore, logically transfer to the Infinite
Mind the temporal distinctions of past, present, and future. A succession of ideas. by
which alone the conception of time is possible, necessarily implies a limitation which
cannot be predicated of the Absolute Mind. Nor is it necessary for us to assume that all
duration is an eternal now with God; for here, again, we use a distinction of time. We can
rightly assume but three facts: first, that, owing to limitations of our faculties, and
especially of language, we have habitudes of thought which do not belong to the Infinite
Mind, and from which arise our baffling difficulties in the investigation of themes like
the present. Secondly, that, however incomprehensible to us, may be the nature and action
of the Divine Mind, yet the obvious facts of the conscious freedom of man’s will and
his moral responsibility-facts which are the indisputable basis of laws and rights, of re
ward and penalty, of virtue and society-must remain incontestable, and be, in some way,
perfectly reconcilable with the divine government They are facts within the comprehension
of our finite faculties, they are positive and certain, and therefore the mysterious, the
unknown, cannot be incompatible with them. With better faculties, and especially with a
better terminology, the chief difficulties of this controversy may vanish, and it may be
seen that we have been contending only about words, and confounded in a mere logomachy.
Hence, as Buckle (History of Civilization, i, 1) says "Among more advanced thinkers
there is a growing opinion that both doctrines (predestination and free-will) are wrong,
or, at all events, that we have no sufficient evidence of their truth."]
11. Analogy of Temporal Superiorities.-Calvinism argues that in this world God
distributes advantages, such as wealth, rank, beauty, vigor, and intellect, not according
to desert, but purely as a sovereign. Hence, in the same way he may bestow on one faith
and eternal life, and on others unbelief and eternal death. Arminianism replies that this
very analogy between the temporal and the eternal bestowment proves the precise reverse.
In this probationary world advantages are professedly distributed without regard
to judicial rectitude. Men are not rewarded according to their works or voluntary
character. The wicked are set on high, and Satan is this world’s god. And the very
difference between the dispensation of the world and that of the kingdom of God is, that
in the latter blessedness is placed at every man’s choice, and the result is
judicially according to voluntary faith and works. The Bible nowhere places beauty or
intellect at our own choice, but it does declare faith, repentance, and eternal life to be
in our own power, and holds us responsible for not exerting the power.
Basis of Morality.-Calvinism claims that the very severity of its system, its deep view
of human guilt and necessary damnability by birth and nature, its entire subjection to
divine absolutism irrespective of human ideas of justice, tends to produce a profound
piety. Arminianism replies that this is missing the true ideal of piety. It seems to be
basing Christian morality on fundamental immorality. For God to will and predetermine the
sin, and then damn the sinner-for him to impute guilt to the innocent, and so eternally
damn the innocent as guilty-are procedures that appear fundamentally unrighteous, so far
as the deepest intuitions of our nature can decide. Thus, first to make God in the facts
intrinsically and absolutely bad, and then require us to ascribe holiness and goodness to
his character and conduct, perverts the moral sense. It is to make him what we are in duty
bound to hate, and then require us to love and adore him. Such adoration, secured by the
abdication not only of the reason, but of the moral sense, and the prostration of the soul
to pure, naked absolutism, naturally results in the somber piety of fear; just as children
are frightened into a factitious goodness by images of terror. While the pity of Jesus is
serene, firm, winning, and gently yet powerfully subduing, the piety of absolutism tends
to be stern and Judaic-like. While thus apparently defective at the roots, it does
nevertheless often present an objective character of rectitude, a practical hardihood and
aggressive energy in the cause of morality and regulated freedom. Arminianism, in order to
a true and rational piety, sees the ideal of rectitude in the divine character and
conduct, not by mere ascriptions contradicted by facts, but both in the facts and the
ascriptions. A harmony of facts and intuitive reason is produced, love to the Divine Being
becomes a rational sentiment, and a piety cheerful, hopeful, merciful, and gladly
obedient, becomes realized.
Civil and Religious Liberty.-As the freedom of the individual, and his own
intransferable responsibility for his own voluntary character and conduct, are fundamental
principles with Arminianism, it is in its own nature adverse to civil or religious
despotism. It has been said that when Romanism persecutes, it accords with its fundamental
principle, the denial of right of private judgment, while when Protestantism
persecutes, it contradicts itself. So when Calvinism persecutes, it obeys an intrinsic
absolutism, while if Arminianism persecutes, it contradicts its own freedom and
individualism. Yet position has often in history produced in all these parties
palpable violations of; and discordance with, their principle. Romanists often
become by position asserters of ultra-democracy, and Protestants of absolute
despotism. And so Calvinism has, historically, been by position the advocate for
revolution, and Arminianism the asserter of authority. In fact, as Arminianism has been,
as above shown, the ruling doctrine of the Church, and Calvinism an insurgent specialty,
so the historical position of the first has been favorable to the assertion of
authority, and the normal position of the latter has been revolt. This may be called one
of the accidents of history. So the learned Selden in his "Table-Talk"
remarked on the curious contradiction in the English civil war, that the advocates of
absolutism in religion were the advocates of political liberty, and vice versa. Yet
it may, perhaps, be truly said that when the religions absolutist gains the power he is
apt to be an absolute though a conscientious despot. He makes a better rebel than ruler.
Prof. Fisher, a Calvinist, gives a severely true picture of the conscientious despotism of
Calvin at Geneva. A similar despotism, on a larger scale, in England under Cromwell,
rendered the nation willing by reaction to rush into the depravities of the Restoration.
Driven to America, even while under the rule of an Arminian monarchy, a similar despotism,
on a small scale, overspread New England.
Nor was Calvinism, as Prof. Fisher truly affirms, the advocate of liberty of
conscience. Not only did Calvin himself banish Bolsec, ruin Castellio, and favor the
execution of Servetus, but he maintained, doctrinally, the duty of the magistrate to
punish heresy. Beza, his learned successor, wrote a treatise in favor of punishing
heretics. Bogerman, the president at the Synod of Dort, was the translator of Beza’s
essay. It is but too evident that the Protestant Calvinist differed with the Romanists not
about the punishment of heretics, but about who the heretics to be punished were. In this
respect the Calvinism of the new Church and the Arminianism of the old were nearly upon a
par. The new Church, however, belonged to the progressive order of things; but whether,
finally, the Calvinism or the Arminianism of the new Church first actually proclaimed
toleration is a matter of question.
Comparative Morality.-Mr. Froude endeavors by comparison to show that Calvinism
is superior to Arminianism in morals, by selecting his own examples. But the Arminian may,
perhaps, in reply make also his selections. Scottish Calvinism has an unquestioned
severity of morals, but are Scotch character and history, as a whole, even ethically
superior to the English? Is the morality of Presbyterianism, in its entire aspect,
superior to that of Moravianism, Quakerism, or Wesleyan Methodism? Are our American
Calvinistic Baptists more Christian in morals than the Free-will Baptists? Is there any
umpire qualified to decide that the devout Presbyterian is superior to the devout
Episcopalian? Did Jonathan Edwards present a type of piety superior to that of Fletcher of
Madeley? or John Calvin to that of James Arminius? Can Calvinism show a grander type of an
evangelist than was John Wesley in England or Francis Asbury in America? Has she produced,
in all her history, a system of evangelism as earnest, as self-sacrificing, as aggressive,
as the itinerant ministry of English and American Methodism? Taking the entire body of
Calvinism since the Reformation, does it excel in purity, martyrdom, doctrine, and
missionary enterprise the (Arminian) Church of the first centuries? If it comes to
counting persons, has any section of the Church nobler names than Justin Martyr, Ignatius,
Irenæus, Origen, Athanasius, Tertullian, Jerome, Chrysostom, John of Damascus, Hinemar of
Rheims, Erasmus, Luther, Melanchthon, Sir Thomas More, Calixtus, Savonarola, Arminius,
Grotims, Episcopius, Limborch, Curcellæus, John Milton, John Goodwin, Jeremy Taylor, Cud
worth, Bishop Butler, Bisliop Bull, Bengel, Wetstein, Wesley, Fletcher, and Richard
Watson?
Comparative Republicanism.-Nor did, nor does, Predestination, as compared with
Arminianism, possess any peculiar affinity with republicanism against monarchy. By its
very nature Calvinism establishes an infinite and eternal distinction between different
parts of mankind made by divine prerogative, by which one is born in a divine aristocracy,
and the other in an eternal helpless and hopeless pariahism; while Arminianism, holding
every man equal before God, proclaims an equal yet resistible grace for all, a universal
atonement and Saviour alike to all, an equal power of acceptance in all, a free,
unpredestined chance for every man to be the artificer of his own eternal, as well as
temporal, fortunes. Caste, partialism, are the characteristics of the former; equality,
universality, republicanism, of the latter. It is as plain as consciousness can make any
fact that it is the latter that is the natural ally, not of monarchies, aristocracies, or
hierarchies, but of regulated freedom. Hence, neither Luther nor Calvin was any more a
republican than Eck or Erasmus. Augustine and Gottschalk were good papists, and
Augustinianism was as entirely at home under the tiara of Gregory the Great as under the
cap of Bogerman-in the court of Charlemagne as in the camp of the Covenanter. Irrespective
of their Calvinism, the Reformers every-where acted according to conditions. Where
kings and nobles favored them, they favored kings and nobles; where (as was generally the
case) they were rejected by rank and power, and had nothing to make royalty and
aristocracy out of; they fashioned a theocratic Commune, out of which modern political
experience has picked some aids and methods for voluntary government. Modern experience
has eliminated the theocracy, the intolerance, and the predestinarianism, and added the
elements to make republicanism. For all this it duly thanks the Reformers, but does not
thank their Calvinism.
History of Arminianism.-The theology of freedom, essentially Arminianism, in opposition
to predestination, necessitated volitions, and imputation of guilt to the innocent, is
universally acknowledged to have been the doctrine of the entire Christian Church through
its most glorious period, the martyr age of the first three centuries. The Calvinistic
historian of theology, Hagenbach, says, (vol. i, p.155:) "All the Greek Fathers, as
well as the apologists Justin, Tatian, Athenagoras, Theophilus, and the Latin author
Minucius Felix, exalt the autonomy or self-determination of the human soul. They know
nothing of any imputation of sin, except as a voluntary and moral self-determination is
presupposed. Even Irenæus and Tertullian strongly insist upon this self-determination in
the use of freedom of the will." Again, (157:) "Even the opponents of human
liberty, as Calvin, are compelled to acknowledge this remarkable unanimity of the Fathers,
and in order to account for it they are obliged to suppose a general illusion about this
doctrine!"
Arminians contend that we know as well when predestination was introduced into the
Church-namely, by Augustine- as we do when transubstantiation and image-worship were
introduced; that it was in the fourth century, when Pelagius upon one extreme made
free-will dispense with divine grace, Augustine on the other extreme made divine grace
irresistibly nullify free-will, and thus both lost their balance ; that both invented
dogmas never before recognized in the Church; that, tried by the previous mind of the
Church, both were equally heretical; that the heresy of order, pushed to extreme, becomes
rationalism and pure deism-the heresy of the other, pushed to extreme, becomes
presumptuous antinomianism. They assert that the Eastern Church maintained her primitive
position, neither Pelagian on one side nor Augustinian on the other, essentially in the
position of modern Arminianism; that hence Arminianism is not a compromise, but the
primitive historical position, the permanent center, rejecting innovations and extremes on
either side; that the Western Church, in spite of the great name of Augustine, never
became Augustinian. It is, indeed, customarily said by anti-Arminian writers that this was
because the " age of systematic theology" had not then arrived. Arminians reply
that a theology not only unrecognized during that best period of the Church, but, still
more, a theology unanimously condemned as heretical by that period, has little right now
to lay claim to pre-eminent Christian orthodoxy. The Eastern Church-namely, the Churches
of Asia, with whom the language of our Lord and his apostles was essentially vernacular;
the Greek Church, to whom the language of the New Testament was vernacular; and the
Russian Church, embracing many millions-all inherited and retain, firmly and unanimously,
the theology of freedom, essential Arminianism. The learned Calvinistic scholar, Dr.
Shedd, in his "History of Doctrines," (vol. ii, p 198,) says: ".The
Augustinian anthropology was rejected in the East, and, though at first triumphant in the
West, was gradually displaced by the semi-Pelagian theory, or the theory of inherited evil
[instead of inherited guilt] and synergistic [or co-operative] regeneration. This theory
was finally stated for the papal Church in exact form by the Council of Trent. The
Augustinian anthropology, though advocated in the Middle Ages by a few individuals like
Gottschalk, Bede, Inseam, slumbered until the Reformation, when it was revived by Luther
and Calvin, and opposed by the papists." It will thus be seen, on a review of the
universal Church in all ages, how small though respectable a minority Augustinianism,
before the Reformation, ever was. With minor exceptions, Arminianism was the doctrine of
the universal Church.
The accuracy of Dr. Shed’s statement of the general nonexistence of Augustinianism
during the Middle Ages is not invalidated by the fact of the great authority of
Augustine’s name, arising from the powerful genius and voluminous writings of the
man. It was no proof that a man was truly Augustinian because lie belonged to the
"Augustinian order," or quoted Augustine’s authority. Such Schoolmen as
Bernard, Anselm, and Peter Lombard modified Augustine’s doctrine materially;
Bonaventura and Duns Scotus were essentially Arminians, and Hincmar, of Rheims, and
Savonarola literally so. Gottschalk, the high predestinarian, was condemned for heresy,
and Thomas Bradwardine, the "second Gottschalk," made complaints, doubtless
overstrained, that in his day "almost the whole world had become Pelagian."
At the Reformation, however, we encounter the phenomenon that all the eminent leaders
at first not only adopted, but even exaggerated, the absolutism of Augustine. This might
seem strange, for it was apparently natural that the absolute papacy should identify
itself with the absolute, and that asserters of freedom would have stood on the free-will
theology. The twin doctrines of the supremacy of Scripture and of justification by faith
were amply sufficient, without predestination, for their purpose to abolish the whole
system of popish corruption. The former dethroned alike the authority of tradition and the
popedom; the latter swept away alike the mediations of Mary, saints, and priests. But the
first heroic impulse of reform tends to magnify the issues to their utmost dimensions. The
old free-will theology belonged universally to the old historic Church and was identified
by the first Reformers with its corruptions. Luther at first, in his reply to Erasmus
"On the Bondage of the Will," uttered fatalisms that probably had hardly ever
before been heard in the Christian Church, and perhaps it would be hard to find a
Calvinist at the present day who would adopt the trenchant predestinarian utterances of
Calvin. Under the indoctrinations of these leaders, especially of Calvin at Geneva, the
absolute doctrines were diffused and formed into the creeds of Germany, the Netherlands,
France, England, and Switzerland. But in Germany the "second sober thought" of
Melanchthon, who at first coincided with Luther, receded from predestination, and
Melanchthon himself intimates that Luther receded with him; so that the Lutherans are now
essentially Arminian. In the Netherlands the same "second thought," led by
Arminius himself, was sup-pressed by State power. In France, Protestantism, which was
Calvinistic, was overwhelmed in blood. In England the Calvinism was generally of a gentle
type, and the same "second thought" was awakened by the Arminian writings of
Grotius and Episcopius diffused through Europe. And as the English Church gradually
inclined to the ancient high episcopacy of the old Church, so it adopted the ancient
Arminianism. Calvinism, persecuted and oppressed, overthrew monarchy and Church, and for a
brief period ruled with hardly less intolerance, until, overthrown in turn, Calvinism took
refuge in America, and laid foundations here. Even here past sufferings did not teach
tolerance, and that doctrine had to be learned from checks and lessons administered by
surrounding sources. Calvinism has, nevertheless, here acted a noble part in our Christian
civilization. It, perhaps, about equally divides the evangelic Church with Arminianism.
Arminianism, proper and Protestant, came into existence under the severe persecution by
Dutch Calvinism, in which the great and good Arminius himself was a virtual martyr. The
Synod of Dort, the standard council of the Calvinistic faith, made itself subservient to
the unprincipled and sanguinary usurper Maurice; and even during its sessions the judicial
murder of the great Arminian and republican statesman Olden Barnevelt was triumphantly
announced at Dort, to overawe the Arminians at the synod, who were bravely maintaining
their cause under the leadership of the eloquent Episcopius. Then followed the banishment
of Episcopius, the imprisonment of Grotius, the ejection of hundreds of Arminian ministers
from their pulpits, and the firing of soldiers upon the religious assemblies of Arminian
worshipers. The great Arminian writers of Holland, Episcopius, Grotius, and Limborch, are
claimed by Arminian writers to be the first public proclaimers of the doctrine of liberty
of conscience in Europe, as those two Arminian Puritans, John Milton and John Goodwin,
were its earliest proclaimers in England.
Wesleyan Methodism is now by all admitted to be a great modern Arminian development.
Beginning most humbly as a half-unconscious awakening amid the general religious chill of
Protestantism, it has not only quickened the religious life of the age, but gathered, it
is said, twelve millions of worshipers into its congregations throughout the world. Its
theology is very definite, and very nearly the exact theology of James Arminius himself;
and of the first three centuries. Cradled in both the Arminianism and High-Churchism of
the English establishment, Wesley’s maturer years earnestly approved the Arminianism,
but severed it from the High-Churchism. The connection between Arminianism and
High-Churchism is hereby clearly revealed to be historical and incidental rather than
intrinsic or logical. Yet, even after adopting the doctrine that every Church has the
right to shape its own government, as a lover of the primitive, post-apostolic Church, as
well as from notions of Christian expediency, Wesley preferred, and provided for American
Methodism, an episcopal form of government. Arminian Methodism has, in little more than a
century of her existence, apparently demonstrated that the Augustinian "systematic
theology" is unnecessary, and what it deems the primitive theology amply sufficient
for the production of a profound depth of piety, a free ecclesiastical system, an
energetic missionary enterprise, and a rapid evangelical success. She exhibits in her
various phases every form of government, from the most decisive system of episcopacy to
the simplest congregationalism, all voluntarily adopted, and changeable at will. The
problems she has thus wrought suggest the thought that the free, simple theology of the
earliest age may be the universal theology of the latest.
PERSONAL HISTORY OF ARMINIUS -The name of Arminius in his native language was JACOBUS
HERMANS, identical with Herman, the name of the hero of Germany, who destroyed the Roman
legions under Yarns. And as this name was transformed into Arminius by Tacitus and other
Roman writers, so, in accordance with the custom of the age when Latin was the language of
current literature, this name was Latinized, and has come down in modern English as JAMES
AEMINIUS. He was born in 1560 at Oudewater, ("Old water,") a small town in the
Southern Netherlands. He lost his father in early childhood, and, his mother being left in
straitened circumstances, the promising intellect of the boy so attracted the attention of
patrons that be was taken to school at Marburg. When fifteen years of age his native town,
Oudewater, was taken by the Spaniards, and his mother, brother, and sister were all
massacred, leaving him the sole survivor of his family. He was sent by his patrons to the
new university at Leyden, where lie remained six years. Such was his proficiency that the
city of Amsterdam adopted him as her vesterling or foster-child, to be educated at
the public expense, being bound by a written obligation to be at the command of the city
through life. He studied at Geneva under Beza, as well as at Basic under Gryneas. At the
latter place he was offered a doctorate, but declined the offer on account of his youth.
By Beza be was commended to Amsterdam in high terms. He then went to Italy to become
accomplished in philosophy under Zerabella, and, having visited Rome and the other
principal cities, returned to Amsterdam, where lie was installed minister at the age of
twenty-eight.
Arminius’s ministry in Amsterdam, of fourteen years’ duration, forms the
second period of his life. His learning and eloquence were rapidly rendering him one of
the leading theologians and preachers of his age. He was of middling size, had dark,
piercing eyes, and voice light but clear, and possessing a winning mellowness. His manners
were magnetic, and be had the power of fastening firm friends. He was condescending to the
lowly, and a sympathizing guide to the religious inquirer. At the same time he was an
independent seeker and follower of truth.
In 1585 the extreme predestinarianism prevalent in the Netherlands had been for ten
years so effectively attacked by Richard Coornhert, an eminent patriotic and acute layman
of Amsterdam, that Arminius was invited by the city to refute him. In a debate at Delft
between Coornhert and two high Calvinistic clergymen, the latter were so hard pressed that
they yielded, and took the lower or sublapsarian ground, and published a pamphlet against
the higher view. The extreme Calvinists called upon Martin Lydius, professor of theology
in Friesland, to refute them, but he handed over the task to Arminius, who had thus a
double request on his hands. He bravely undertook the task, but was soon convinced of the
untenableness of either the higher or lower predestination. At the expense of an
ignominious failure in even attacking Coornhert, he resolved to pursue the light of
honest conviction. Avoiding the entire subject in public, he prosecuted his investigations
with earnest study. Yet, in lecturing on Romans vii, having given the non-Calvinistic
interpretation, he found himself generally assailed by the high Calvinists as a Pelagian
and Socinian. He was arraigned before the ecclesiastical courts, Where he successfully
defended himself on the ground that, though adverse to the prevalent opinions, his
interpretation contradicted nothing in the standards; namely, the Belgic Confession and
the Catechism. Being questioned as to predestination, he declined to answer, as no fact
was alleged against him.
In prosecuting his inquiries he determined to consult privately the best theologians of
the day. He commenced a confidential correspondence with Professor Francis Junius, of the
University of Leyden, the most eminent of the Dutch theologians. He was delighted to find
how far Junius coincided with him, but when he addressed to Junius the arguments for still
more advanced views, the professor kept the letter by him unanswered for six years, when
he died. The friends of Arminius believed that this silence arose from the fact that
Junius found more than he could answer or was willing to admit. Unfortunately, this
correspondence was inadvertently exposed by Junius to discovery, and was used to the
disadvantage of Arminius. Arminius, also, having received a treatise in favor of
predestination by Professor Perkins, of Cambridge, prepared an epistle to him, but was
prevented by Perkins’s death from sending it. His letters both to Junius and Perkins
are embodied in his published works, and, whatever may be thought of the validity of the
argument, no one will deny that in candor, courtesy, and Christian dignity they are hardly
to be surpassed.
On the death of Junius the curators of the University of Leyden looked to Arminius as
his successor. The reluctant consent of Amsterdam being at length gained, Arminius
assented. But the predestinarians, led by Gomarus, senior professor of theology at Leyden,
opposed his election. After a long series of strifes, Arminius offered to meet Gomarus and
satisfy his objections. The meeting took place, and Gomarus, admitting that he had judged
Arminius by hearsay, after Arminius had fully declared his entire opposition to
Pelagianism and Socinianism, fully renounced his objections. So far as predestination was
concerned, each professor was to deliver his own sentiments with moderation, and all
collision with the other was to be avoided; and Arminius was thereupon elected.
The six years of his Leyden professorship closing with his death are the most important
yet troublous period of his career. The terms of peace were broken within the first year
by Gomarus, who delivered a violent public harangue on predestination in terms of insult
to Arminius, who was personally present; to which the latter prepared a refutation clothed
in terms of personal respect toward his opponent. Gomarus afterward confessed that he
could easily live at peace with Arminius but for the clergy and Churches, who were
intensely hostile to his liberal doctrines. Their Belgic Confession, Calvinistic as it
was, was sacred in their hearts as being the banner under which they had fought the battle
of civil and religious liberty against Spain and popery; and they now, alas! were making
it the instrument of religious intolerance. Arminius was held as invalidating that
Confession, and so was every-where traduced by the clergy as a papist, a Pelagian, and a
Coornherter. Yet, really, the doctrines he taught were essentially the doctrines of St.
Chrysostom, Melanchthon, Jeremy Taylor, and John Wesley. In regard to the Confession, he
ever treated it with reverence, and only claimed the right of that same liberality of
interpretation which Lutherans exercised with the Augsburg Confession -a liberality
similar to that which the English clergy now exercise in regard to the seventeenth of
their Thirty-Nine Articles. A voluntary Church may, like any other voluntary association,
be, if it pleases, stringent in its interpretations, but a State Church, which strains all
to a tight interpretation of a specific creed under pain of State disabilities, runs in to
religious despotism. This was, therefore, a genuine contest for religious liberty.
Arminius was proscribed by the clergy, harassed by irresponsible deputations, and his
students were subjected to persecutions and exclusions from the ministry. The more
intelligent laity, including the magistracy, and especially the chief magistrate, Olden
Barnevelt, were favorable to Arminius, who at length appealed to the national legislature
(called the States-General) for protection. That body appointed a committee or council,
who, having heard both Gomarus and Arminius in full, reported that the latter taught
nothing but what could be tolerated. Before the States-General themselves Arminius
delivered a full oration, expounding his entire views, which is published in the American
edition of his works. The clergy demanded the appointment of a national synod, consisting
purely of ecclesiastics, but the States-General, well knowing what would be the fate of
Arminius in their hands, refused. Under the constant pressure of these years of
persecution the gentle spirit of Arminius at length sunk. He was taken from the bloody
times that followed the Synod of Dort. His nervous system was prostrated, and, attended by
his faithful pupil, the afterward celebrated Episcopius, he died in the faith he had
maintained, October 19, 1609, a martyr to his views of truth.
FOURTH SERIES, VOL. XXXI.-27
Edited by Aaron Bynum, June 16, 1999.
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