Arminians and the Belgic Confession

[arapahoepark]

So I ran across someone who wants the moniker of 'Reformed' yet is a total Arminians. They claim the Belgic Confession and Heidelberg Catechism align with their views citing that Arminius never disavowed them. Admittedly, I am not well read in this era of history. What are some refutations of this position?

 

[Poimen]

From the perspective of many Reformed people of that time and today, Arminius and his followers dissembled, however according to his own testimony he accepted the confessions of the church as in accord with his own views. For the latter, see Arminius: A Study in the Dutch Reformation, by Carl Bangs. Obviously for the former the Canons of Dort are definitive as an doctrinal and ecclesiastical statement rejecting the errors of Arminianism in any form.

For clarification, you should ask those espousing these views to elaborate if they precisely hold to Arminius' views or that of his followers because those who came afterwards made the trajectory of that teaching far clearer. For example, Arminius thought the perseverance of the saints was a open question but his followers denied it.

 

[Phil D.]

"There was talk in the United Provinces about holding a National Synod, and Arminius and supporters such as Johannes Uitenbogaert had made it clear that such a synod should seriously consider revising the Heidelberg Catechism and Belgic Confession." Here.​

 

[Phil D.]

So I ran across someone who wants the moniker of 'Reformed' yet is a total Arminians. They claim the Belgic Confession and Heidelberg Catechism align with their views citing that Arminius never disavowed them. Admittedly, I am not well read in this era of history. What are some refutations of this position?

"There was talk in the United Provinces about holding a National Synod, and Arminius and supporters such as Johannes Uitenbogaert had made it clear that such a synod should seriously consider revising the Heidelberg Catechism and Belgic Confession." Here.

The historical point of course being... early Arminians may have claimed broad affinity with the BC and HC, and it may not be correct to say they outright disavowed them, but their plea for those statements of doctrine to be amended shows that in reality they had some significant differences with their content.

 

[Semper Fidelis]

This is where reading Muller's Post Reformation Reformed Dogmatics is useful.

There is sot of an idea in some circles that you choose your own adventure in Reformed theology and pick a theologian in Reformed history or a time period where ideas were being consolidated and say something like - "I agree with Calvin (or insert your thinker here) but not with those theologians who ruined real Reformed theology after him."

The Belgic Confession came relatively early in the post-Reformation period. That's not bad in itself, but it wasn't written to anticipate all errors. The Remonstrants borrowed ideas from the Molinists and had some other ideas that were widely regarded as outside the stream of the Reformed Churches. You can't find every Reformed thinker anticipating or systematizing something in opposition to a future error, but you can see the threads of certain ideas that need to be developed to provide greater accuracy to keep folks like Socinians and Aminians out of the orthodox Churches.

 

[Eyedoc84]

Arminius and his followers technically subscribed to the Belgic and Heidelberg, but by introducing certain ambiguities into their interpretation of them. Arminius suggested that a conference or synod be held to address whether certain statements as constructed/standardly interpreted were within the bounds of scripture. But he himself spent years evading questions of his teaching/preaching, complaining that he was being set up (sound familiar to another active thread?). He died “in good standing” before any official process was carried out. 10 years later, his followers gained enough traction that a synod was held (Dort) to clarify the Belgic and Heidelberg to find whether their beliefs truly were within the pale. We all know what the answer to that was, but the whole process was met with delays, obfuscations, and complaints that the deck was stacked against them (again, sounds familiar).

Modern “reformed Arminians” still live in that pre-1619 world, echoing Arminius and claiming that their beliefs are broadly within the bounds of the Belgic and Heidelberg, and claim that Dort was an illigitimate kangaroo court.

 

[Redeemed Ronin]

The Remonstrants borrowed ideas from the Molinists...

I didn't know this, but I'm also not surprised either. I cannot put my finger on it, but many Molinists come across as intellectual Arminians and have more in common with the RCC in terms of their understanding of justification and their dislike of Reformed theology.

But he himself spent years evading questions of his teaching/preaching, complaining that he was being set up (sound familiar to another active thread?)...

The fact that he avoided questioning and clarifications would be suspicious to me. If he was serious about his stance, then I would imagine that he would welcome all challengers.

 

[Ploutos]

I didn't know this, but I'm also not surprised either. I cannot put my finger on it, but many Molinists come across as intellectual Arminians and have more in common with the RCC in terms of their understanding of justification and their dislike of Reformed theology.

Molinism was invented by a Spanish Jesuit, so this is not a surprise.

The fact that he avoided questioning and clarifications would be suspicious to me. If he was serious about his stance, then I would imagine that he would welcome all challengers.

Exactly... pardon me sir, may I take a closer look at your fleece? What? Why not?

 

[Semper Fidelis]

From PRRD 3:

In addition to Suárez’ work, a major contribution to the metaphysical discussion of the age was made by Louis Molina, whose Concordia liberi arbitrii cum gratiae donis, divina praescientia, providentia, praedestinatione et reprobatione (1588) had offered a revision of Thomist metaphysics to include a separate category of divine knowledge of future contingents (scientia media) and a considerably altered view of the divine concurrence with free secondary causes.100 Whereas Suárez’ thought influenced the development of Reformed theology both positively and negatively, the influence of Molina was primarily negative. The debate over scientia media that began following the publication of Molina’s Concordia in 1588 was but a prelude to the intense debates over the views of Vorstius, the Socinians, and eventually of Remonstrant theologians like Episcopius and Curcellaeus. Whereas there had been considerable trinitarian debate in the sixteenth century and very little over the question of the divine essence and attributes, the seventeenth century saw both the continuation and the intensification of the trinitarian polemic and the inauguration of a series of major debates over the identity of God and over the character and manner of predication of the divine attributes.

Granting that the most prominent and influential positive use of Molinist arguments on scientia media and the divine concursus among Protestants during the era of early orthodoxy was in the theology of Arminius,101 and that Arminius’ use of these concepts was directed primarily toward the establishment of a different relationship between God and the world than that found in early orthodox Reformed dogmatics,102 Arminius’ theology occupies a significant, albeit somewhat negative, place in the development of the Reformed doctrine of God: on the one hand, the shape and structure of his doctrine, with its emphasis on the divine life as distinguished into the faculties of intellect and will, belongs to the central line of the Reformed development—while, on the other, his revision of the conception of scientia media along Molinist lines sets him apart from the Reformed development.103

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100 Luis de Molina, Concordia liberi arbitrii cum gratiae donis, divina praescientia, providentia, praedestinatione et reprobatione, ed. Johann Rabeneck (Onia and Madrid: Collegium Maximum Societatis Jesu, 1953). See E. Vansteenberghe, “Molina, Louis,” in DTC, vol. 10/2, cols. 2090–2092; and idem, “Molinisme,” s.v. in DTC, vol. 10/2, cols. 2094–2187; also note the historical background offered in Paul Dumont, Liberté humaine et concours divin d’après Suarez (Paris: Beauchesne, 1936).
101 Jacobus Arminius, Opera theologica (Leiden, 1629); the preferred translation is The Works of James Arminius, trans. James Nichols and William Nichols, with an intro. by Carl Bangs, 3 vols. (London, 1825, 1828, 1875; repr. Grand Rapids: Baker Book House, 1986).
102 See Richard A. Muller, God, Creation and Providence in the Thought of Jacob Arminius: Sources and Directions of Scholastic Protestantism in the Era of Early Orthodoxy (Grand Rapids: Baker Book House, 1991), pp. 153–166, and idem, “God, Predestination, and the Integrity of the Created Order: A Note on Patterns in Arminius’ Theology,” in Graham, ed., Later Calvinism, pp. 431–446.
103 Cf. William L. Craig, The Problem of Divine Foreknowledge and Human Freedom from Aristotle to Suarez (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1980), and idem, “Middle Knowledge: A Calvinist-Arminian Rapprochement?” in The Grace of God and the Will of Man, ed. Clark H. Pinnock (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1989), pp. 141–164 with Richard A. Muller, “Grace, Election, and Contingent Choice: Arminius’s Gambit and the Reformed Response,” in Thomas Schreiner and Bruce Ware, eds., The Grace of God and the Bondage of the Will, 2 vols. (Grand Rapids: Baker Book House, 1995), II, pp. 251–278.

 

[Semper Fidelis]

More...

Conrad Vorstius also occupies a significant, but nearly entirely negative, place in the development of Reformed orthodox doctrine of the divine attributes. After his successful defense of two of his works, De sancta trinitate (1597), and De personis et officio Christi (1597), before the Heidelberg faculty, he was called in 1610 to Leiden as the successor of Arminius. There, the revised edition of his 1602 Disputationes decem de natura et attributis Dei brought rapid condemnation from the Dutch Reformed, notably Sibrandus Lubbertus, and from the faculty at Heidelberg. Vorstius was dismissed from his professorship but paid his salary until his condemnation as a heretic by the Synod of Dort. Vorstius’ treatise on the divine nature and attributes attempted to modify the concepts of divine simplicity, infinity, and immensity in such as way as to allow distinctions in the divine nature.117

The problems of middle knowledge and the Vorstian understanding of divine attributes, coupled with a rising interest in Platonism—not merely the writings of Plato but also of middle- and neoplatonism, together with a sampling from the Hermetic literature—were evident to English Reformed as well as to the continental divines. The inroads of the new views were most noticeable in the highly developed Treatise of the Divine Essence and Attributes (1628) written by Thomas Jackson, an Oxford scholar and Dean of Peterborough. Notable among the erudite defenders of Protestant orthodoxy against these variant views was William Twisse, whose eminence would earn him, at the very end of his career, the position of prolocutor of the Westminster Assembly.118 Although, like Owen after him, Twisse did not write a theological system, his treatises on divine grace, power, and providence, on middle knowledge, and on predestination, together with his massive refutation of Jackson on the divine essence and attributes, reached both a level of detail and a penetration nearly unparalleled in his time.119 Twisse’s debates with Jackson and others gave him a clearer perception than many of his contemporaries of the significance of Aristotle for traditional orthodoxy and, in his view, of the problematic character of Platonism—not to mention his sense of the positive relationship between the great medieval doctors and the Reformed tradition. Twisse’s citations of Aquinas, Scotus, Durandus, Vasquez, and Suárez show him to have been a master of the scholastic materials, old and new.

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117 Conrad Vorstius, Tractatus theologicus de Deo, sive, de natura et attributis Dei (Steinfurt, 1610).
118 See Sarah Hutton, “Thomas Jackson, Oxford Platonist, and William Twisse, Aristotelian,” in Journal of the History of Ideas, 39 (1978), pp. 635–652; also Peter White, Predestination, Policy and Polemic: Conflict and Consensus in the English Church from the Reformation to the Civil War (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ Press, 1992), pp. 256–271; and M. E. Van der Schaaf, “The Theology of Thomas Jackson (1579–1640): An Anglican Alternative to Roman Catholicism, Puritanism and Calvinism” (Ph.D. diss., University of Iowa, 1979).
119 William Twisse, Vindiciae gratiae, potestatis, ac providentiae Dei hoc est, ad examen libelli Perkinsiani de praedestinatione modo et ordine, institutum a J. Arminio, responsio scholastica (Amsterdam, 1632); idem, Dissertatio de scientia media tribus libris absoluta (Arnheim, 1639); idem, The Doctrine of the Synod of Dort and Arles (London, 1650/1); and idem, A Discovery of D. Jacksons Vanitie. Or, a Perspective glasse, whereby admirers of D. Jacksons profound discourses, may see the vanitie and weaknesse of them (London, 1631).