In this excerpt from Saving the Reformation, Dr. W. Robert Godfrey examines Jacob Arminius and the Calvinists who opposed his teaching. Previous post.

The charges here are extremely serious, but the quotation seems to have two disingenuous elements. First, at the very end of the treatise, the suggestion of some mitigation of Gomarus’ responsibility because he wrote in ignorance does not seem sincere. Gomarus was a professor of theology, and his conclusions on predestination surely cannot be attributed to ignorance. Second, Arminius writes that he is making his conclusion about Gomarus “openly,” but there was nothing open about it. (Stanglin, in the quotation above, similarly writes that Arminius “responded directly” to Gomarus.) Arminius did not publish this work in his own lifetime and made no public statement about these convictions until 1608 in his Declaration of Sentiments.

The extreme nature of Arminius’ reaction to Gomarus leads to another question about his integrity. Within a few months of completing his Examination, in response to an inquiry from the Classis of Dordrecht about controversies at Leiden, on August 10, 1605, Arminius signed a public statement along with this fellow theology professors, Franciscus Gomarus and Lucas Trelcatius, which declared “that among themselves, that is, among the Professors of the Faculty of Theology, no difference existed that could be considered as in the least affecting the fundamentals of doctrine.”¹ Was Arminius being honest? It is hard to see how Arminius could have written what he did in his Examination and then could claim that he agreed with Gomarus on the fundamentals of doctrine. Surely, teaching that makes God the author of sin is a fundamental doctrine.

On the other hand, we must ask if Gomarus was honest in suggesting that he had no trouble with Arminius or his teaching in 1604. While Gomarus wanted to teach somewhat differently on predestination in 1604, had Arminius in his 1604 disputation on predestination said anything that would have seriously offended Gomarus? Arminius wrote in thesis 2, “Predestination therefore, as it regards the thing itself, is the Decree of the good pleasure of God in Christ, by which He resolved within himself from all eternity, to justify, adopt, and endow with everlasting life, to the praise of his own glorious grace, believers on whom He had decreed to bestow faith (Eph. i; Rom. ix.).”² Further, he wrote in thesis 7, “But we give the name of ‘Believers,’ not to those who would be such by their own merits or strength, but to those who by the gratuitous and peculiar kindness of God [erant credituri] would believe in Christ.”³ These statements of Arminius as far as they go represent views completely compatible with Calvin’s teaching on predestination and would not have offended Gomarus. He does not raise in these theses his concerns about the origin of sin or the source of faith.

The evidence shows that Gomarus did nothing unusual or offensive in presenting theses on predestination in 1604. His supralapsarian views did greatly offend Arminius, who responded with vicious criticism of Gomarus’ teaching, which he kept private while publicly claiming agreement with Gomarus on basic doctrines. It is Arminius who seems bitter and rather dishonest in this period, not Gomarus. If the positive Arminius narrative falls apart on close examination of this one key piece of evidence, the whole narrative begins to unravel.

Free Will

In July 1605, Arminius conducted a public disputation titled “On the Free Will of Man and Its Powers.” While the theses of the disputation themselves were not controversial, controversy soon swirled around him. Bangs explains this:

Two days later, in a letter to Adrian Borrius, he reveals his thinking on these questions. “I transmit you my theses on free will, which I have composed in this [guarded manner], because I thought that they would thus conduce to peace. I have advanced nothing which I consider at all allied to a falsity. But I have been silent upon some truths which I might have published, for I know that it is one thing to be silent respecting a truth and another to utter a falsehood, the latter of which is never lawful to do, while the former is occasionally, nay very often, expedient.” Those hostile and those sympathetic to Arminius have divided on the ethical question.⁴

Stanglin addresses the ethics of this situation: “What Arminius wrote to his friend about the caution he took in the public disputation on free choice was apparently said publicly at the disputation itself, for Gomarus was aware of the statement. Whatever Arminius meant by withholding some opinion at the disputation on free choice, his decision not to declare everything was no secret, but acknowledged openly.”⁵ If Stanglin was right, then Arminius was not duplicitous, as many have thought, but was provocative. Surely, Gomarus would have wondered and worried about what his other unspoken opinions were. Gomarus’ doubts about Arminius were growing.

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