As we have been noting through this series, in the hands of the Remonstrants, grace is not sovereign, saving, efficacious in the way that the Apostle Paul had spoken of it nor in the way that Augustine and his followers in the Reformation had spoken of it. In Arminius’ theology and in that of his followers, grace became once again “assisting.” Grace does not secure its object and end. It facilitates. At best, in the Remonstrant conception, grace more like a performance-enhancing drug than it is the powerful, saving favor of God. 

As Bob Godfrey has well illustrated in his new book on the Canons of Dort, Saving the Reformation, the theology of the Synod of Dort was eminently pastoral. Synod was precise in its response to the Remonstrants but it was not technical. The Canons of Synod were not technical or academic, even if they were informed by the academic work of some of the delegates and other Reformed theologians across Europe and the British Isles. Remember, the Reformation was only about a century old when Synod began to meet. Arguably, if Luther did not reach his Protestant views (as he himself said) until 1519, then the Reformation was 99 years old when Synod began meeting.

Certainly the Remonstrant attempt to undermine the Reformation by re-defining grace, faith, justification, and salvation was evident in their doctrine of conditional election and universal atonement but the pastoral consequences of that doctrine became even clearer in the fifth chapter (head) of the 1610 Remonstrance where 42 Arminian ministers confessed:

ART. V. That those who an incorporated into Christ by a true faith, and have thereby become partakers of his lifegiving spirit, have thereby full power to strive against Satan, sin, the world, and their own flesh, and to win the victory, it being well understood that it is ever through the assisting grace of the Holy Ghost; and that Jesus Christ assists them through his Spirit in all temptations, extends to them his hand; and if only they are ready for the conflict, and desire his help, and are not inactive, keeps them from falling, so that they, by no craft or power of Satan, can be misled, nor plucked out of Christ’s hands, according to the word of Christ, John x. 28: “Neither shall any man pluck them out of my hand.” But whether they are capable, through negligence, of forsaking again the first beginnings of their life in Christ, of again returning to this present evil world, of turning away from the holy doctrine which was delivered them, of losing a good conscience, of becoming devoid of grace, that must be more particularly determined out of the Holy Scriptures before we ourselves can teach it with the full persuasion of our minds.

Under the pretense of uncertainty, the Remonstrants sketch their doctrine of assurance (or rather the lack thereof) when they suggested that there are those who are actually, really “incorporated into Christ,” i.e., united to Christ and actually, truly “partakers of his life-giving spirit” with “full power” to “strive” toward godliness and to “win the victory” (because it is in doubt) with the “assisting grace” of the Holy Spirit. Again, as we have been noting through this series, in the hands of the Remonstrants, grace is not sovereign, saving, efficacious in the way that the Apostle Paul had spoken of it nor in the way that Augustine and his followers in the Reformation had spoken of it. In Arminius’ theology and in that of his followers, grace became once again “assisting.” Grace does not secure its object and end. It facilitates. At best, in the Remonstrant conception, grace more like a performance-enhancing drug than it is the powerful, saving favor of God. Arguably, however, the Remonstrants had an even lower or weaker view of grace as a natural endowment with which God is prepared to “co-act” as William of Ockham had taught in the 14th century and as Gabriel Biel had taught in the 15th century.

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