Tuesday, October 10, 2023

It is the 10th of October, 2023. Welcome to the Christian History Almanac brought to you by 1517 at 1517.org. I’m Dan van Voorhis.

A few weeks ago, on the mailbag, we responded to a question from Lindsay in Alabama about “Calvinism vs. Arminianism”. And we suggested that this debate tends to rile up folks on campuses of Christian colleges, and it can lead to the eyes glassing over with many Christians in the pews. Nevertheless, there are some important questions raised in the debate, and it is a controversy best done in supervised settings with texts in hand. Nevertheless, it is John Calvin (of Calvinism) fame whose name is largely known, but who was the other fellow? Jacob Arminius (a last name he gave himself after a Germanic chieftain who opposed the Roman Empire) is less known save for the “ism,” which is derived from his name (although not used until 1614, 4 years after he died).

Well, lucky us, as today is the 10th of October, and it was on this day in 1560 that Jacob Hermanszoon was born in Oudewater, then part of the United Provinces in conflict with the Spanish Netherlands.

We know little of his father, except that he was a cutler and died when Jacob was an infant. His mother was then left to raise him and his siblings.  A local priest, Theodore Aemilius, would arrange for his schooling in Utrecht, and when he died, another man, Rudolf Snellius (a professor at Marburg), took him to Hesse-Cassel to continue his studies. It was then, in 1575, that the Spanish attacked Oudewater. Concerned for his mother and siblings, he returned to find them all killed. He vowed to give his life to the service of the Provinces.  

He would attend the new college at Leiden and travel and study in Padua, Rome, Geneva, and Basel. The last two universities, centers of Calvinism, sent him home with letters of recommendation for the faculty at his alma mater.

He would be ordained in Amsterdam in 1588, married in 1590, and in 1603 appointed professor of Theology at Leiden.  

From the 1590s, he had been preaching through the book of Romans and taking contrary positions to some of his fellow Dutch Reformed ministers. Intending to emphasize the grace of God, he taught what would be called God’s “middle knowledge” (The Molinists in the Catholic church and some Lutherans did as well). It stated that God’s omniscience (his “all-knowing”) includes what “would” happen in the case of circumstances brought about by the un-coerced choices of humans. That is, there exists a kind of free will in humans even while affirming God’s sovereignty. In the early 1600s, his position was controversial amongst some but not considered beyond the pale of orthodoxy. In 1604, Arminius and his colleague Francis Gomarus held separate disputations on campus, but the debate remained largely academic and amongst theological faculty. It wasn’t until the death of the University Regent in 1607, who helped keep the peace, that things began to escalate. In 1608, Arminius presented his “Declaration of Sentiments,” which questioned the idea that God foreordained some to Hell before the Fall of Adam and Eve. This would lead to the Dutch States General calling a national synod to ask these questions in light of the church-adopted confessions of faith (the Heidelberg Confession and Belgic Confession). However, it wouldn’t happen until 1610, and it was in October of 1609 that Jacob would die.

It would be his followers who would write up the Remonstrance- a petition for legal protection of those who held to 5 articles in dispute. These folks would first be called “Arminians” in 1614, 4 years later, and in the lead-up to the Synod of Dort that condemned them and gave us the famed “5 points of Calvinism”. The movement that would take Jacob’s assumed surname would hardly be shaped by the man himself, save concerns over the order of God’s decrees. Arminius’ works were not published until 1629, well after the movement that took his name had developed its own distinct theology. It wasn’t until the works of John Wesley that Arminius would be rehabilitated amongst some Protestants, and it took until the 19th century for the first biography of Arminius to be published in English. All that to say, the person and “-ism” shouldn’t always be linked- and that is certainly in the case of the man who gave the modern church one of its more famous “-isms” and debates.

The last word for today is from the daily lectionary and a good word for Calvinists, Arminians and the rest of us:

17 Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come: The old has gone, the new is here! 18 All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation: 19 that God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting people’s sins against them. And he has committed to us the message of reconciliation. 20 We are therefore Christ’s ambassadors, as though God were making his appeal through us. We implore you on Christ’s behalf: Be reconciled to God. 21 God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.

This has been the Christian History Almanac for the 10th of October 2023, brought to you by 1517 at 1517.org.

The show is produced by a man whose last name may come from the Gaelic for “servant of the bishop,” which is an odd name for an LCMS pastor- he is Christopher Gillespie.

The show is written and read by a man whose last name is improperly alphabetized 99% of the time-, it’s “VO” not “va”- I’m Dan van Voorhis.

You can catch us here every day- and remember that the rumors of grace, forgiveness, and the redemption of all things are true…. Everything is going to be OK.