Who was Arminius?
by Robert Godfrey
(President & Church History Professor of Westminster Theological Seminary)
James Arminius (Jacob Harmenszoon) is undoubtedly the most famous theologian ever produced by the Dutch Reformed Church. His fame is a great irony since the Dutch Reformed Church historically was a bastion of strict Calvinism and Arminius has given his name to a movement very much in opposition to historic Calvinism. Who was this Arminius? What did he teach? Are the differences between Calvinism and Arminianism important today?
Who Was Arminius? Arminius was born in 1559 in Oudewater - a small city in the province of Holland. Holland was one of seventeen prosperous provinces then known as the Netherlands or the Low Countries, which today are divided into the Netherlands, Belgium and part of northern France. In 1559 His Most Catholic Majesty Philip II was the king of Spain and Sovereign of the Netherlands.
Despite Philip's ardent Roman Catholicism and persecuting zeal, Reformation movements had been strong in the Low Countries for decades. In the late 1540s Calvinism emergd as an attractive, popular religion in the Netherlands, especially in the southern provinces. In 1559 Guido de Bres wrote the first edition of the Belgic Confession, which clearly summarized the Calvivistic faith and set it off from Roman Catholicism and Anabaptism. The Belgic Confession became one of the basic doctrinal standards of Dutch Calvinism.
The decade of the 1560s saw dramatic developments in the Netherlands. The Belgic Confession was published. A storm of iconoclasm broke out, destroying many images in Roman Catholic churches throughout the provinces. Guido de Bres was martyred for the faith. Philip II increasingly alienated the nobility and the people with his fiscal and religious policies. Revolts broke out against royal authority.
By the early 1570s civil war had begun in earnest against Spain. History knows this revolt as the Eighty Years War, which was not settled until 1648. Growing up in the midst of civil war in state and church, Arminius knew the bitterness of war. In 1575 his mother and other members of his family died at the hands of Spanish troops in a massacre at Oudewater.
In October of 1575 Arminius entered the newly founded University of Leiden. He was the 12th student to enroll in the school that honored the heroic resistance of Leiden to Spanish siege in 1574. He was a talented student and like many students of his day continued his education at other schools. From 1581 to 1586 he studied in Geneva and Basle.
While in Geneva Arminius seemed to have some trouble with Theodore Beza, Calvin's staunch successor. The evidence suggests not theological, but philosophical, differences. Indeed there is very little evidence as to exactly what Arminius' theology was in his student years. What is clear is that when Arminius was ordered to return to the Netherlands in 1586 to take up pastoral responsibilities in Amsterdam, he was given a very good letter of recommendation from Beza to the Dutch Reformed Church.
Before returning to Amsterdam, Arminius took a trip into Italy to see the sights. This trip was later used by some Calvinists to accuse Arminius of having Roman Catholic sympathies. But such charges were clearly untrue and unfair.
Once back in Amsterdam he became one of several pastors there and in 1590 he married Lijsbet Reael, a daughter of one of Holland's most influential men. Arminius became allied to a regent family and his convictions on the relation of church and state were the same as that of most regents. Indeed, he was appointed in 1591 to a commission to draw up a church order in which the church was given a position clearly subordinate to and dependent on the state. This position (usually called Erastianism) was not held by most clergy in the Dutch Reformed Church. Most followed Calvin's conviction that the church must have a measure of independdence from the state, especially in matters of church discipline.