We are coming close to finishing this series. I think this is part 14. I think we're going to do part 15 and probably be done with this. I was going to do some application on evangelism and its effects, but since we're already covering that in Sunday school, there's not really much need. So we want to close with a little bit of history. Some theology too, but mostly history. We've covered a lot about the theology of Calvinism and Arminianism. We've looked at some early church history, and that's good. I think it's really good to have just an understanding of church history. But we haven't gotten to the history of the Reformation itself, even though it's extremely interesting. That is just too much to cover. So we're not gonna do that. I don't think we necessarily need to anyway. But there is just a bit of history I would like to cover regarding the rise of Arminianism in the post-Reformation period. So we're talking late 16th century into the early 17th century. So late 1500s, early 1600s is where this starts to go down. Basically same time as the rise of Puritanism in England. This is happening in the Netherlands. So we're going to do a brief overview of the life and the theology of Jacob Arminius himself, the man whose name now applies to so much of the theology of most of generic evangelicalism. The funny thing is that almost no Arminians call themselves Arminians. Even though they are Armenians, they don't say that, at least not very frequently. That is what they are, whether they realize it or not, doesn't matter. They don't necessarily take the name upon themselves too much. If you ask an Armenian, are you Armenian, you probably won't get a yes as definitively as this, you have to, Calvinist, are you a Calvinist? We'll be like, yeah, obviously. One of the best sources I have seen from this comes from my old seminary president, W. Robert Godfrey. He's a history professor, too, one of my favorite history professors. I know some of you have used his church history lectures, and they are really good. You'll know how good of a teacher he is. He's fantastic. He wrote a book called Saving the Reformation, the Pastoral Theology of the Canons of Dort. And he's part of the URC. The URC is the United Reform Churches. Those have a direct history linked to the Netherlands. They're Dutch. It's Dutch reformed. And that's where this entire controversy kind of happened. So he's in the tradition in which this controversy happened. The Senate of Dort that was called in response to the Remonstrants, which we'll get into all that. That's the Armenians. The Remonstrants are the Armenians. And there was a Synod of Dort that was called in response to that. They published the Canons of Dort, which I'm hoping some of you have read and heard of. That document, the Canons of Dort, along with the Belgic Confession, the Heidelberg Catechism, some of these have been mentioned here before, they make up what's called the Three Forms of Unity. That's the doctrinal standards of the Continental Reformed or the Dutch Reformed Church. And there's a few Dutch Reformed traditions or denominations, I should say, in the US. There's a CRC, the Christian Reformed Churches, and the RCA, Reformed Churches of America. Those have largely gone liberal. They've abandoned the confession. There's still little tiny bits of faithfulness within them yet, but they can pretty much be written off as meaningless denominations. Once you go liberal, you're meaningless. So, but the URC, United Reformed Churches, are the faithful ones that came out of those churches and created the United Reformed Churches, and those are good churches. They're faithful churches. You would very much enjoy going to these churches. The ones we visited, we very much enjoyed when we were in seminary. They're solid. The Dutch folks are good folks. I don't know. So I didn't do any original research on this. I didn't go dig up Arminius' writings and that sort of thing. I read some of them, not a lot, but I didn't go do the original work. Most of this is his original research. I don't even know Dutch, so I can't read any of the, I don't know if they even wrote in Dutch. Even though I grew up Anabaptist, I don't even know Pennsylvania Dutch, so. That's what the Amish speak. It's actually German. They call it Pennsylvania Dutch. But I still want to distill some of the coverage of Arminius to you. And if you are interested in reading it in greater detail, then his book is a good place to start. Anything he does is really worth your time. It's super interesting. He's a great presenter and does very good history. And this basically comes from a section of that book where he does the history and theology, or mostly the history of Arminius. Here's something that's super ironic though. The most ironic thing about this whole affair is that Jacob Arminius is probably the most famous theologian from the Dutch Reformed Church. Which is funny, because he's not Dutch Reformed. I mean he is, was, but not in theology. It's sadly hilarious, since they are so fundamentalistly Calvinist, which is great. It's in their confessions, just like ours. We have our standards, 1689 Baptist Catechism, First London Confession as well. They have theirs, Belgic Confession. Canons of Dort, Heidelberg Catechism, those are all great. They're fundamentally Calvinistic just like we are. But you can't be Dutch Reformed and Arminian. Just like you can't be Reformed Baptist and Arminian. And you can't be really any kind of Reformed and Arminian. But the history is the history. Technically, he was, all the way up until his death, a minister in good standing in the Dutch Reformed Church. Although, to be fair, they probably would not have kept him in there. He probably would have faced some church discipline or booted out had he lived long enough to be fully exposed and dealt with, or if he had been clear and honest at the start of this controversy about his teaching. How did this historical irony happen? That's what we're going to get into. Well, let's start at the beginning. He was born in Outerwater. Outerwater in 11, what? 11. No, that's not right. 1559. I wrote 1159. You know what I did? I wrote 11559, and I deleted the extra five instead of the extra one. I remember that now. It's funny. So no, he was not 300 years old when this happened. Born in 1159. Oh my word, 1559. I make a lot of these mistakes. I hope you just know what I mean most of the time, like when I call Proverbs, Hebrews, and stuff like that. Anyway, small town in Holland, which was one of the 17 provinces, and the Netherlands. The Netherlands has a bunch of provinces. Netherlands, the low countries, as they are called, just nether, below countries. They're very low, below sea level. That's why they have all the dikes and all that. So immediately, we have a few things to clear up. A lot of people get confused about this. Holland and the Netherlands are typically used interchangeably, I know. But technically, Holland is a province within the Netherlands, or at least it was. Now it's North and South Holland, two provinces. But it's the most dominant one, most populous province. And it contains the capital Amsterdam, which is also the largest city. It's got some of the other large cities, Rotterdam and The Hague, so it's fairly dominant. That's why when people think of the Netherlands, they think Holland. If they hear Holland, they think Netherlands. They think they're interchangeable. They're technically not, but you get the gist of it. And to make it more confusing, people from the Netherlands are called Dutch, right? Which, why? Why aren't they Netherlanders? hollish or something. I don't know. It's not really worth explaining all that here, but long story short, it's derived from a word that basically means people. And the high Dutch referred to the people in the mountains of southern Germany. They were called the high Dutch. The low Dutch were the people in the lowlands, the flatlands of the Netherlands. And for various reasons, the Dutch name stuck with the people of the Netherlands and not so much with the people of Germany. I don't know. It just basically means of the people, something along those lines. lowlands, the people of the lowlands, something along those lines, and the Dutch part stuck. The other more relevant confusion is actually about Arminius's name. I don't know if you've heard this. His name was actually James Hermanson. So if you strongly Anglicized it, we'd probably call him James Harmanson or Hermanson, but Names are frequently Latinized. I don't fully understand why that was. Sometimes I think it was intentional. Sometimes I don't know. It was for academic purposes. But the Latinized version of James Hermanson is Jacob Arminius, Jacobus Arminius, which is further Anglicized from Latinized. Then it's Anglicized to mean Jacob Arminius, which for some reason the Arminius basically stays Arminius instead of, I don't know, whatever else it would be. Again, this is one of those funny things. But James and Jacob is, It's basically the same name, or at least they're variants of the same root word. Jacob is a Hebrew name, and it stays Jacob in straight translation, but it also gets Hellenized. That means the Greeks got a hold of it, and that makes it Jacobus. And for some reason, that becomes James in English. I don't get it. I don't know why Jacobus doesn't just become Jacob in English, but it becomes James in English. So if you know your English history, you might remember reading about the Jacobites. I don't know. The supporters of the House of Stuart, King James II was head of the House of Stuart. He's king after King Charles I and II and also his father or great-grandfather, something, of King James. But he was removed by the Glorious Revolution. The Glorious Revolution was 1688. That led to greater Religious freedom in England, act of toleration, which is why our confession, the 1689 London Baptist Confession, was actually published in 1677, but it's called the 1689 because that's when they could come out and say, yeah, we hold to this confession and this is who we are. They used it before that, but that act of toleration, the religious freedom, gave them that freedom to do so. Anyway, you see that name relation there. The Jacobites supported King James. They're Jamesites. you see the same name relation. So James Harmonson is Jacob Arminius. Probably more information than you need to know but interesting stuff I guess. Like I said, he was born In 1559, got it right that time, which is the same year that Guy Debray, I don't know if you've heard of him, Guy Debray, published the first edition of the Belgic Confession. That's the most basic doctrinal standard of Dutch Calvinism. That's their doctrinal standard, the Belgic Confession. Largely agrees with ours. Largely agrees with the Westminster. It's a different form, not as long. He was martyred eventually, but the Dutch were in the midst of fighting Roman Catholicism. Literally, the Spanish were trying to control them. King Philip II, this led to the Eighty Years' War. If you know some of your European history, this Eighty Years' War that was going on throughout all this. Spanish were, I don't know, always interfering in the Netherlands for some reason. It seems kind of distant, but so it was. So Arminius grew up in a pretty turbulent time. And in fact, in 1575, so he was about 16-ish, his own mother and some other family members were killed by Spanish troops in a massacre in his hometown of Ottawa. The same year, though, he entered into the newly founded University of Leiden. So he's about 16. That sounds crazy, like, oh, you must be some genius to go to university at a young age. That was fairly typical of those that chose the academic track. About six to seven years later, after going through University of Leiden, he went to Switzerland to study. Specifically, he went to the very reformed towns of Geneva and Basel. Calvin had died about 18 years before he got to Geneva. They are not contemporaneous. Calvin was dead before he got there, died just a few years after Arminius was born. But Calvin's famous successor, Theodore Beza, was still there, and he was a theological giant in his own right, honestly. Arminius did seem to butt heads a little bit with Beza and some other Calvinists in Geneva and spent some time in Basel, kind of had some other issues there. But it wasn't actually over philosophy, it was over, or sorry, it wasn't over theology, it was over philosophy, over philosophical debates. Apparently, he was an ardent Ramist. I don't know if you've heard of Ramism. We're not going to get into that. They differed with the Aristotelians and they butted heads. So he kind of, you know, he had a reputation for doing this sort of thing. We're not going to get all to that jazz with all the philosophy. We're going to ignore that. It doesn't matter. Regardless of those debates, Arminius received this very good letter of recommendation from the leading professor of theology in Basel. He kind of had to make up some ground. I think he caught on to the fact that he did not have a good reputation, so he kind of seemed to tone it down, tone down his ramism, his propensity to dispute in later years in Switzerland. He kind of had to learn to go along to get along a little bit. And he was also, just as surprisingly, he was able to receive another letter of recommendation from Beza in Geneva, even though they had butted heads initially. You know, they said, look, he's a fine young man. He's pious. We haven't seen any necessarily errors from him. So he didn't do so bad that, you know, he initially ruffled some feathers, but it wasn't so severe that he wasn't able to get letters of recommendation. So he seemed to have at least fixed his reputation a little bit. I mean, people knew him for this, but not to the point where it ruined him or anything. Now the Church of Amsterdam, back in the Netherlands, the Church of Amsterdam, was essentially supporting Arminius in his studies. And they heard some of these reports about his problematic behavior, and that meant his continued support was a little bit under threat. And they asked some questions about it, but he seemed to have adjusted his behavior well enough to get those letters of recommendation that went a pretty long way to calming those fears of the church in Amsterdam. We're not really sure if he had yet developed his aberrant theological beliefs. We have reason to believe he may have or was starting to toy with them a little bit, but we don't really have any detailed information about that yet. Could have been that the pushback he received from disputing his philosophical positions caused him to be less forthcoming about his aberrant theological beliefs as well. That probably was the case. Knowing the rest of the story, I do tend to think it is the case that he saw what happened when he raised issue with his philosophies and it was sort of like, all right, I'll shut up about my theology too. I don't want to get myself in trouble and lose my support. He sounds like a decent guy so far, but it is my opinion that he saw the threat that it would be to his career. if he was public about what he believed, what he actually believed, if he defended or publicized it at all. And I think that kind of shut him up. He knew he'd be cut off from the church financially. They're not going to support a guy that doesn't support their doctrine, right? We're not going to send our minions and And Church of Christ people on the mission field, why would we? We have endless amounts of reform people we could support, why would we do that, right? And so same case, he's gonna be cut off financially if he continued to be stubborn and obstinate like people accused him of being. So even though he was in a country with thoroughly Calvinistic theology, he essentially got trained by this experience to go along, to get along, to kind of be quiet and not cause fights, not draw attention to yourself, not get yourself in trouble. This was likely the beginning of his subtle undermining of reform theology. He was very bright and he was a very talented young man at this point, by all accounts. But he had this noticeable pattern of being confrontational and very adamant when he was disputing his views. Church in Amsterdam eventually urged him to return. They're like, all right, come back and serve as minister or whatever. He didn't do that immediately. For some reason, he spent seven months in Italy. went back to Geneva for a few more months before he went back to Amsterdam in the late summer of 1587. So that's where we're at now, 1587, he's 26-ish, somewhere in that range. 36-ish, am I doing my math right? 26-ish, I think. The following year, 1588, After a delay of seven months for some unknown reason, we don't know why, but he was ordained in 1588. So now he's a minister in the Dutch Reformed Church in the Netherlands. Not sure about this delay, nothing's really written about it. When this happened, he would have had to subscribe to the Belgian Confession, which he would have been familiar with. It's pretty clear on predestination, unconditional election, all these things. perfectly clear, the theology is understood, he was a bright guy, he knew it, he was educated in famous reformed cities, he was educated by reformed men and then he would have been examined for ordination by reformed men so at that point he was either totally orthodox, probably not, or more likely he was casually deceiving the church by redefining terms or simply affirming doctrines he did not believe. We're not really sure which. It's possible that he was maybe toying with these ideas, and he's like, all right, you know, he's playing with them around on the side. He's got these incorrect views, but he hasn't settled on them yet. That's possible. It could have been that. There's no way of knowing for sure. So he's a minister in the Dutch Reformed Church now, 1588. Two years later, about 1590-ish, gets married into a prominent rich merchant family. He marries well. And this did actually have a theological impact on him because his father was a Rastian. I don't know if you've heard of that, but believe me, you've heard of what it is. That means he wanted the church and its ministers to be under the supervision of the civil government. Not a good idea. Never has once been a good thing in history. That's called a Rastianism. And Arminius quickly adopted this position. That was not the view of the vast majority of the Dutch-reformed clergy. This was definitely a minority view. It's not a good thing, right? They didn't want the level of independence that we would advocate, but they wanted a relative independence, more than the Eurasians, obviously. Arminius may have already held those views and may have been quiet about them previously. Again, we're not super sure. We don't know if his dad, mother, or father-in-law being a Rastrian kind of brought it out of him, or if he was like, yeah, I've kind of always thought that, and I'm all for it, or if he just completely switched. I don't know. He's wrong. Either way, he picks a terrible position and defends it. Maybe he only became more vocal due to the influence of, he's married well into this new professional, political, economic family network. And he's got good ties now, especially to some people in the civil government. In fact, Arminius served on a committee appointed by a leading government official to draw up a Rastian church order for the church. So the civil magistrate saying, hey, why don't you draw up a document on this committee and put Arminius on it and draw up a document how the church, the civil government should be over the church. And he's like, okay, great, I believe that. And he did it and it was so controversial that the majority of the church stood against it and it couldn't be implemented, which is great. That's a very good thing. This is a curious issue though. Think about this. The issue of church discipline was taken seriously in the Dutch Reformed Church. They did church discipline. The Belgic Confession says it is one of the marks of a true church. A true church practices church discipline. So the church strongly believed it had the right and the duty to regulate the teaching of its ministers, just like you do. Like, if I get up here and start spouting off something ridiculous, you can hold up the confession like, these are our standards, you're going against it, and you can remove me. You can remove anyone that stands up here and does it. You are in control of it. But the civil government cannot do it. So the church thought, yes, we will regulate the teachings of our ministers. But the government of the Netherlands had at times stepped in to protect some ministers that were targets of church discipline. Ministers that were teaching bad theology and civil magistrates come in and they're like, you're going to need to keep him around, that sort of thing. So the sort of stuff that ruins churches, they were doing. And so Erastrianism is a dangerous thing. And they would have been formally empowered to do that sort of thing if that Erastrian order that he helped to draw up had been drafted and instituted. And there's no doubt that Arminius' political connections would have protected him from church discipline in the event that he got exposed for his true beliefs. I don't know if he had the foresight thinking like, look, I believe these very undutch reformed things, non-dutch reformed things, and I want these buddies of mine to step in and protect me, and that'll be a whole lot easier if we have an Erasian church order. I don't know if he had that sort of foresight. But his whole life kind of tends that way, so it's sort of like, yeah, he probably was thinking in those terms. Now, that was not his only dalliance into controversy, either. He also decided to preach on Romans, which is not the kind of thing that an Armenian is going to do well, right? So he likewise faced some trouble regarding Romans 7 and Romans 9, both, as you might expect. Both instances, he deviated from the standard Protestant, standard Reformed position, because, I mean, really, the Reformed position here is the Protestant position. He said the struggles of Paul in Romans 7, that we all know so well, reflect the problems of an unregenerate man. It's not Paul talking about himself fighting about remaining sin as a believer. He says this is an unregenerate man. This is in spite of the fact that in Romans 7, 22, Paul says he delights in the law and the inner man. And somehow Arminius is like, yeah, that describes an unbeliever, an unregenerate person. Which is silly, I think, in my opinion. He also speaks in the present tense, which is relevant. But an obvious description of a regenerate believer, Arminius says, no, that's an unregenerate person. Then in Romans 9, he rejected the overwhelmingly obvious doctrine of unconditional election taught there. But even in so doing, even as he did that, he claimed, I still hold to the interpretation of the Belgian Confession. I might have some quibbling with the wording there, but the interpretation that the Belgian Confession says, I hold to that still. The local ministers basically accepted his explanation until, they're kind of holding out for a general senate of like, all right, well, a senate could kind of take care of this. The senate is a gathering of the churches. and they get together and figure stuff out. And a general synod can determine the proper interpretation of the Belgic and what we believe the Bible says, we can wait for that. So they kind of eased off a little bit. So again, we see Arminius is stirring up trouble. And again, we find the Calvinists found a way to allow him to keep working and stay out of trouble. This could have been some combination of deceitfulness by Arminius and his way of minimizing it. The way that he did, I think that's strongly the evidence that he was very dishonest about it. But the consistory itself, the gathering of the ministers, they could have been minimizing some of it too. Like, we don't want to deal with this. I mean, he didn't say something, it's not great, but it's not horrible. Because he was a little bit slippery about the way he said things. Again, it's one of those things that's hard to tell. But Arminius was certainly downplaying his disagreements with standard reformed orthodoxy. Now, as he's a pastor or a minister during this time in Amsterdam, He didn't publish any of this stuff. He wrote about it, but he didn't publish it. So we have the writings now, but he didn't make this stuff public. And that included his study of Romans 9 in 1596, which he wrote in response to another study published by another minister. And again, we see his poor interpretation and error for Romans 9. What we see in his writings on such things as predestination is that he objects to unconditional election because he thinks it makes God the author of sin. He denies the Belgic Confession. He denies the standards of his church. He doesn't tell anybody, but he does. He also criticized Beza. You can tell from his writings that he fundamentally does not understand the argument over man as a free moral agent, freely choosing sin because of his nature. He doesn't describe it well or seem to get it. He doesn't exhibit an understanding of the particular points that he's disagreeing with. Again, a common thread in Arminian theology. He doesn't actually propose any explanation, as in, well, here's what it really does mean and how it really does work. He more just says, well, that's not right. I see that and that's not true. It's like, okay, then what is true? Well, I don't know, but that's not, it's that sort of idea. He simply criticizes and says, Romans 9 doesn't mean that. I mean, to be fair, that's what I used to do, but that's what Armenians do. So he opposes orthodoxy, but he doesn't propose an explanatory alternative. He just opposes what the orthodox say. He raised the same objections again in 1597. He's writing letters with Franciscus Junius. He was a fairly well-known professor. Some people have heard of him. He thinks if God ordained the fall, if God is sovereign and ordains all things, if he ordained the fall, then men cannot be exposed to any kind of blame. If God decreed something, they can't be blamed, since then they would sin by necessity, was kind of his argument. He said this, this is straight out of his writings. For my assertion remains unshaken that God is made to be the author of sin if he be said to have ordained that man should fall and become wicked in order to open for himself a way to declare his glory in that manner which he had already by an eternal decree appointed. He's Armenian, so. In 1602, Arminius also wrote, but again did not publish, a response to a study of predestination by the famous English Puritan William Ames, sorry William Perkins. William Ames is also a really good Puritan, but William Perkins, they're both good. So he responded to William Perkins, doesn't publish it. Again, but there he seems to admit that he hadn't been settled on this doctrine for a long time. He admits it in there and likely should never have been giving people the impression that he was an Orthodox Calvinist even though he continued that facade. He again asserts Perkins' arguments are unconvincing. He offers no, little to no positive proposal of how faith and election work. He just totally seems uncertain about the origin of faith. And he dances around the subject, he sounds like he's, advocating semi-Pelagianism or some other form of ineffectual grace, prevenient grace, and we see later that isn't pretty much what he did, but he dances around it, like he sounds like a semi-Pelagian when you read what he's writing against William Perkins. In 1603, He left the ministry, was no longer going to be a minister in the church, but he went to become a professor of theology at Leiden University, his alma mater, even though his appointment was strongly opposed by some clergy. So he had stirred up enough controversy, enough suspicion where people are like, You can't trust this guy. So there was some opposition to him. And they couldn't really figure out what to do. They had two professors of theology leaving. They recommended, there was two other guys coming on. He was one of them. So there's one guy left. And they're like, all right, that's Gomerus. We'll have Gomerus interview him. He's the one theology professor. He's ardent. unquestionable orthodox Calvinist. And so Gomaris interviews him and somehow is satisfied with the answers that he gets. So the only reasons that we can know for, so either Arminius had kept people in the dark enough where Gomaris didn't know the questions to ask him. That's possible. Or Arminius didn't give honest or complete answers to the questions. That seems to be his sort of modus operandi. Or Arminius changed his mind on some issues after the interview, but based on his writings, that's not very likely. So it could have been some combination. Gomaris didn't necessarily know what to ask, and Arminius is being very sneaky and not giving complete or honest, fully honest answers. That's very likely what the case is. And we can see that because of what he had written but not published, right? So he didn't really know the, Gomerus didn't really know the extent of Arminius' deviation from orthodoxy and obviously we know by now that Arminius is less than forthcoming on these issues. In other words, Arminius was not a noble man. His character is more exposed, I mean, he's a snake. He's a snake. He's one of these guys that's dishonest for the sake of his own well-being, whether it's career or what, I don't know, didn't have the scruples to stand up for what he believed. I'm not calling him a snake because he got these things wrong. I mean, there's good Arminian people, right? He's a snake because of the way he handled it and lied about it. So him and Garmaris are kind of essentially butting heads for the remaining years. Unsurprisingly, Arminius took issue with Gomerus. Gomerus wrote a series of theses on predestination for his students in teaching. That's one of the things they did. They'd write some series of theses, and they would go and talk about them. And Arminius did this, and he kept it really short. And then Gomerus did pretty fully, and Arminius didn't like it. And he set out to write a refutation of those theses, in which he basically calls Gomerus's teachings satanic. And he writes in his preface about this, that he plans for Gomerus to read the refutation. So he's writing it like Gomerus is gonna see this. And this is basically satanic teaching. And he goes into it a lot. But again, like before, he doesn't publish it. He writes it, keeps it private, doesn't publish it. Even though it sounds like he's planning to have it published, he doesn't. And then another move that shows he was actually a man of very little integrity. He signed a public statement in 1605 that declared his differences in fundamental doctrine with his fellow theological professors of Leiden were basically nonexistent. No, we're all in agreement. He signed a declaration saying he's in agreement with all of his fellow theology professors. We know for a fact that he's lying in that. He lied publicly about it. Again, to what, retain his position? Probably. You know, his reasons for doing so can only be guessed at, but it seems somewhat obvious in my opinion. So he continues to pretend to hold to the same beliefs as everyone else. And in July of 1605, he conducted a public disputation on free will, which was controversial because of the things that he said. He admitted in a letter written to a friend at the same time, like two days after this disputation. And he publicly stated at the disputation itself that he intentionally was withholding some of his opinions. He's admitting to the fact like, there's some other things I believe that I'm not really saying right now. It's like, what's that all about? Well, this is kind of the way he operated. As expected, this increased suspicion, particularly amongst his faculty, the fellow theologians. Gamaris, again, he's like, what? What is that? Say it. You know what I mean? You're telling us you're keeping secrets about your opinions on this. So he admits publicly to being less than candid about his beliefs. And in private, he contradicts the very reformed theology that he claims to support confessionally. He's still claiming, yeah, I believe the confession and our standards and all that. The following year in 1606, He has a rectoral address, he served as a term as a rector. And at the end of that, you're supposed to give the speech and he does that. He seemed to dismiss the importance of Christian debate against falsehood and corresponding religious division. So he's kind of given this lecture. To end, wrap up his time as rector, and it very much sounds like the evangelical gripe with those that defend orthodoxy against new methods, new approaches, doctrinal sloppiness, that sort of thing. It's sort of the idea of like, why do we gotta fight all the time? I mean, we're all basically saying the same thing, right? I mean, they do the mass, and we worship Christ as Lord, and they worship an idol, like who cares, right? I mean, it's not that extensive, but That's what he's saying. He just doesn't say it that well. Or he doesn't believe or understand the significance of these debates and he's downplaying them. He seemed to apply the same complaint against far more serious and very necessary divisions, like even the divisions about Rome. He seems to pretend like it's not that big a deal, let's all just cool it, you know, let's cool our jets. It's like, oh my word, we just went through how many wars? We're still in the midst of a war? We just did the whole Reformation and you're just like a tempest and a teapot kind of idea? Like this sort of thing is really aggravating, this approach. Again, you can see the thrust of his approach to provide cover for himself and his own false teachings if and when he gets exposed. He just wants this idea of just like big deal. Like, okay, so I am not a Calvinist. And yeah, I said I believe the Belgian Confession. And yes, I was lying the whole time, but come on, it's not that big a deal. He wants people to kind of have that attitude. So he won't come out in a minute, but he seems to be constantly defending himself about an impending exposure, some impending controversy. It's like everything is geared towards how can I be protected if and when that happens? Now it would seem that the Dutch Reformed Church polity was prepared for dealing with theological controversy and disagreement, and it should be. They gather in a synod and they can deliberate and consult and they determine what the Bible says concerning various matters. What is the church position? Is our confession right about this? What's our confession say? Are we summing up what the Bible says? They can consent, come to common consent, and then they can disseminate that to their individual churches. It's the churches coming together, agreeing, and then they go back to their churches and said, this is our standards. But Arminius didn't really consider that path, shockingly. He knew he had very little influence in the church. They were all reformed, and secretly. He was not at all. So suspicions were constantly being raised and people didn't trust him. And they shouldn't have. And so he knew he didn't really have a lot of influence in the church. So what did he do? Arminius wants the Erasturian approach. You know, he's like, okay, well, let's do a synod, right? But who should we involve? Who should run that? How about the civil magistrates? Let's do that. So for obvious reasons, he wants the chief magistrates to convene a synod, and he wants them to preside over it. He wants them as the presidents of the synod. So he's making political moves to protect himself ecclesiastically, right? This is one of the dangers of the church and state being too closely related. He's trying to maneuver, he's trying to leverage the state, his buddies in the state, to protect him in the church, even though he's at odds with the church. His theology could not withstand examination from the church, so he wanted the protection from his powerful political friends. He further recommended the deliberation be done without the confession or the catechism, even though he claimed to be in agreement with both. He's like, well, let's meet in synod and let's not even use the confession in our standards, the things that we've agreed on for decades. Let's not even consider those. You know, that can sound very pious, right? It can sound very much like, oh, he just wants to use the Bible. Who could have a problem with that? But it pretty much misses the entire point of doctrinal standards, like confessions and catechisms. It misses the whole point. It's because they'd already done the work to say, we know what we believe, and this is what we agree, and here's a document explaining it. This is like an interpretation of what we're saying the Bible means. So it's just a way to skirt around it and sound pious. And because he didn't want to be held to the standards of his own church, and he knew that he couldn't, so he wanted them to just get rid of that. So this called to disregard the established standards, reinforced the suspicions of many of the churchmen. They're starting to see through him. They saw what he was trying to do to change the theological commitments of the church. That's what they're seeing. And he was. That is what he was doing. He had numerous secret issues with Orthodox Protestantism. It wasn't just predestination and unconditional election. He claimed election was conditional. He claimed it was based on foreseen faith, very obvious errors. He denied Orthodoxy and the Belgic Confession on original sin, too, though. He got a lot of serious stuff wrong. He got part of original sin right, like we're corrupted, but not the part about inherited guilt. He denied that. He denied that saving faith always included a confidence of assurance. So we talk often, you may have heard this about the three parts of faith. You know the gospel, you assent that it's true, you agree like this is a true story, and then you trust Christ. That's what saving faith is. Because even the demons know and agree that it's true, they just don't trust Christ, right? They hate Christ. We say saving faith has all of those parts, the knowledge, the ascent, and the trust. He contradicted that. The Heidelberg Catechism taught that, but he said, no, the trust part is distinguished from faith. That's different. So he denied his standards there, denied the Heidelberg Catechism there. When it comes to faith and justification, he actually taught that it is the faith itself that is imputed to us as righteousness. Not that faith is an instrument. He denied that faith is the instrument by which Christ's righteousness is imputed to us. which likewise goes against the Heidelberg Catechism, all orthodoxy, it goes against all orthodoxy, but he's like, no, no, the faith counts as righteousness. He basically said, faith is the one work required by man in the new covenant. Like that's the newness of the new covenant. No, forget all those laws, there's one law, have faith. And if you have faith, then that faith counts as if you're righteous. because of the faith itself is righteousness. That's what he does. He further denied his own church's standards by admitting, it was strictly possible for the regenerate to fulfill the moral law perfectly in this life. That's starting to sound a little Pelagian, at the very least semi-Pelagian, but it can happen. You can be regenerate, you can fulfill the moral law perfectly. Now he does say it's rare if it happens at all. Well, great, but he's still saying it. So he taught that grace is essential and necessary, but not necessarily efficacious. Which again, huge portion of the whole debate of the Reformation was not the necessity of grace, but is grace effectual? Does it do the thing that God sets out for it to do? That was a huge part of the Reformation. He made man's response to grace the final decisive factor in salvation. So he says Jesus doesn't save anyone literally, he just made salvation probable or possible. In other words, newsflash, Arminius was an Arminian. So jot that down. It's true. I mean, this theology is named after him for a very good reason. And he did what all Arminians do. They try to limit man's contribution to salvation. They gotta include man, but they try to limit it. And while they do that, they simultaneously make man's contribution the very central act that determines all of it. It all hinges on man. In fact, you know what? He wasn't even completely orthodox on the Trinity. Now this might get a little bit technical. You may have heard some of this before. I mean, I know we've covered some of it before, but it's not the kind of thing that we. He tended towards subordinationism. He said, the son was begotten of the father. And that's what we say, right? The son was eternally generated by the father. He was begotten of the father. And when we say that, we mean in regards to his person. His sonship is eternally generated from the father. So that's what all orthodoxy says. That's classical theism. But Arminius says, no, this is also in regard to his divinity. We say the son has his sonship by way of generation, but we never say, we never say that the son has his essence or his being by way of generation. No, we say he is very God of very God, true God of true God, same essence as the Father. We confess that in these creeds. That's what we mean. He's not eternally generated as a divine being. It's just his sonship. I know that's technical, but the important thing is he denied some very important aspects of the Trinity. So some of his own students were starting to give testimony against him. So some of the accusations, the suspicions, the rumors were growing significantly enough that the church was starting to, it was getting to a point where they have to do something. And we're not gonna get into all that yet. We'll save that for next week. But in 1608, Arminius was finally asked to present his views in person, like just what is it? What do you believe? Say it, present it. So in October 1608, he prepared and read what is called the Declaration of Sentiments to an assembly in The Hague, it's over in Holland, and he defended his unwillingness to explain and defend his views in the past, and then he proceeds to analyze and reject various reformed views. He finally says it. He appeals for protection from who? The magistrates. He wants the civil magistrates to step in. They had at times protected other ministers who got in trouble with the church. taught falsely, the magistrates protected them from ecclesiastical consequences, he wants them to do the same thing for him, and he tried to downplay his denial of predestination by saying, I was a little surprised by this. So he's like, look, there's a lot of people that deny the things that you say about predestination, like Rome and all the Anabaptists deny it. I was like, my word. Literally, the two worst groups that you could possibly appeal to for doctrine. And he's just like, well, they do it too. That doesn't make you look better. That makes you look so much worse. What are you thinking? And then he spoke of the situation in the Netherlands. And he claimed, a lot of people have left the churches, or they threaten to leave the churches if we keep teaching this doctrine. It's making people leave, which, man, that sounds like nothing more than a proto-church growth argument. If we teach this, people won't like it, and they won't come to our church, and then we won't have a lot of people giving money, and we won't build these big buildings and be special and influential. That's what it sounds like. He's trying to use that same argument, but people won't like it, or they don't like it. Yeah, a lot of people hate the gospel. Okay, big deal. We're supposed to skirt away from the truth because people don't like the truth. That's his basic argument. Even though he doesn't think it's true, he's saying even if it was like, you know, he's trying to downplay this. Asserting disagreement over predestination as a reason to reject it is still a very common argument amongst Arminians today. I once had an elder, And he's like, well, I googled it and there's like a bunch of disagreement out there on the internet about it. And that was like one of his reasons to reject it. And I was just like, you gotta be kidding me. It's like, why don't you Google the deity of Christ or justification by faith alone? See if you find disagreement about that. Is that reason to reject those? Because if you Google a theological question, you're gonna find a theological debate. That's just how it goes. Again, terrible argument. Anyway, Arminius went on to propose many of the basic Arminian teachings such as conditioned election, election conditioned on God's intellectual foreknowledge, like literally he knows what's going to happen in the future, he knows who's going to repent and believe because of pervenient grace, stuff like that. That is those that did the work of faith, right? He called faith a work. Those that do that work, the more humble ones, the more obedient ones, they are rewarded or they earn election and regeneration. That's the reason, because you did something that's a work, you did it on your own, you took up that grace and you used it. So he was finally straightforward and honest, but at the same time, in doing so, he finally exposed all of his previous deceit, because this was not new. He didn't just come up with this. He had repeatedly lied about his agreement with Gomerus, his agreement with the standards of his own church. So here's the bottom line. He was Arminian, and he lied about it a lot. Constantly worked covertly to deny the truth and undermine the teaching of his own church. He sought to use the power of the civil government to subvert the ministers and the standards and the doctrines of the church that he claimed he was in agreement with and he had vowed to uphold their teaching. He was, as Abraham Kuyper called him, a crafty fox. I call him a coward and a snake, but crafty fox is also good. So next time, we're gonna conclude all this by looking at the remonstrance. That's the supporters of Arminius after his death, took up his cause. That's the Synod of Dort and its canons, that was called in response to that. Deal with those false teachings, and then we'll probably cover a little bit of the lasting effects of Arminianism. And basically, the horrific damage that it has done to the church. And I don't know if I've communicated it well. The dishonesty that it is to pretend to believe something, to take vows that you'll teach and defend something, and then lie about it for years. So when I got ordained, when Ken ordained me, I stood up here and took vows that if I change on something, I will have to be forthright about it. And if you decide he can't be a minister of this church anymore, that's the consequence of honesty, big deal. That's how it works. You don't lie about it. I have some friends that had... had a church pastor that was doing this sort of thing. He's preaching some things. I'm like, this doesn't sound real good. He won't come out and say any of this. But they would send me some of the sermons. I was like, that doesn't sound good. If he's willing to say this publicly, that's just the tip of the iceberg. He probably has a ton under the surface that he's not willing to tell you, which is what Arminius was doing. And eventually, they started dealing with their pastor, my friends. The church had to deal with the pastor. He was a complete fraud, a complete fraud on all the doctrine. And as soon as he got out from the church, as soon as he didn't have that position to protect, that salary to protect, the reputation to protect anymore, he completely jumped the rails and went off into complete heresy. And that's the kind of thing, if they're willing to say these little aberrant things or raise suspicions over and over and over, there's probably way more under the surface that they're just not being forthright about because it'll ruin their career, their reputation, their influence, whatever it is. That's what Arminius did. He was a snake. So I hope you don't like him. I don't. And it's not because he was Arminian. That's a good enough reason. But we like Arminians. We like our Arminian friends most of the time. But we don't like snakes. We don't like people that work to subvert the church and try to use the government to do it. Oh, that just grates on me. All right, enough of that. Any questions? I know that's a lot of history very quickly. Any questions about Arminian, Arminius? Amen. Yeah, exactly. Jesus is going to tell the truth, and if people hate the truth, they're not going to be a part of the church. And this has been the fundamental Arminian error. The consequences of it is they're trying to appeal to what people want to hear, what they want to see, what they like, and all the seeker-sensitive churches and church growth movements and all the stuff that deviates from the actual gospel to make it, you know, it's a big flashy show that is all rooted in the Arminian denial of what man is. He fundamentally doesn't get it. If that's your argument, you fundamentally do not understand how people are saved, you don't understand what we are and what we become by way of regeneration. It's exactly right. Not that he doesn't care-care, but he's not going to back away from the truth. And I pray that is the truth of our church. Not that we wanna say it and be mean, but we're never gonna back away from the truth because we see so and so, some important person is not gonna like this. Or our church, and you know what, if our church closes its doors because we stand on the truth, so be it. Let it be. We're not gonna maintain a church at the cost of the truth. Forget that. Arminius would, we wouldn't. We're reformed. All right, any other questions before we close? Yeah. I would say any Wesleyan denomination, mostly because of Wesley, not so much because of Arminius, but Free Will Baptists, Anabaptists, but they wouldn't use the term unless they're forced to. So there are, but it's hard to get them to use the title. In spite of that, it's still hard for them to use that title, which I get that. Nobody likes these extra biblical titles, but they're necessary and useful. Yeah? Yeah, Arminianism and semi-Pelagian, what is the correlation? nearly identical, functionally equivalent. If you read the Council of Orange 529, canons of the Council of Orange, you'll see what they are condemning and it is almost exactly what Arminius says in various ways. Not all of it, but the portions that are relevant. Would he claim it? No, not that I know of. Got accused of it. In fact, they accused him of, you're just going back to the Pelagian era of Rome. This is what we just got done fighting. We'll cover a little bit of that next week in sort of the response. But nobody really comes out and says, I'm semi-Pelagian. But it is exactly what he's saying. What he said was what got condemned when semi-Pelagianism got condemned in terms of the functions of how it works. Yeah. So people will say, like, it's a technical difference. It's a functional equivalent. It's an absolute functional equivalent. Yep. I do think it's worth mentioning that as we are winsome with our Jesus and the gospel, that it leaves the door open for the Armenian person to ask questions, which is the goal of teaching the beautiful doctrines of Christ. It is a doctrine to be admired. and honor. And I just think we need to be careful that we don't dishonor Christ because His blood was shed. Yeah, you're talking about in the manner in which we speak with Arminians. Totally agree. Totally agree. So I hope you see most of this attack on Arminius as being a liar and a deceiver. His theology we've already dealt with, but the prerequisite for a fruitful conversation to happen is honesty about beliefs. And that's the thing about him is he was dishonest. So it's sort of like, no, no, I agree with you. And you're like, then why are you saying this or that? And he's like, no, I agree. It's like, we can't get anywhere if you're pretending that you're saying something you're not saying. So yeah, I have a snarky attitude a little bit about him and his history, but it's not purely against Arminianism. It's against his craftiness and self-protection. I would never speak this way to an Arminian. So yeah, I hope I'm not conveying an attitude of like go out and talk to Arminians like I'm talking about Arminius. Those are two very different things. Plus he's been dead for a very long time and knows well better, hopefully, at this point. But yeah, I think it is worth mentioning that the carefulness in which we engage in this conversation needs to be at the forefront of our minds, because people look for every excuse to discount what we say. And if you're a jerk, that's the low-hanging fruit. It's like, I'm not going to listen to a jerk. I don't care what he says. Don't give him low-hanging fruit to ignore your words by just having an attitude of, you're an idiot, that sort of thing. They're not dumb. Arminius was not dumb. He was bright and pious by all accounts, but also a liar, unfortunately. Yeah. Vast majority. Vast majority. I would agree. Yeah, and there's even people that I was talking with somebody this week and they were running some questions by me because they're, you know, they have some, they're doing some work in their own church and they're like, well, they're saying this and this and, and they agree. And I'm like, if you hear, if you hear it presented this way, They haven't done any work because they know they shouldn't say that. That's not even a question. For instance, if somebody says, well, we have a choice, that's somebody that doesn't functionally understand what we're talking about. No one has ever disagreed about whether we have a choice. It's about spiritual ability and making the right choice. And unless you get specific on that sort of thing, you can't presume that they've done the work to know it. And most of the time they expose the fact that they may have heard a thing or two, but they haven't done any of the work to actually figure out what's being argued one way or the other. So that's usually a An easier way to answer questions and just get the right questions out in front of them, instead of having an actual butting heads type debate. Cuz then you can be like, well, I agree with you, but here's the real debate. Here's what's actually being talked about, and then you get to that. And then they're like, well, I hadn't thought about that. All right, I hope you guys enjoy church history. I know we don't do it constantly, but we do it every now and then. It is important in various ways, but this is one of the more important ones, I guess. It ties to our own history a little bit more. Anyway, I hope you enjoy it, and it's not too much. I know it can be a lot sometimes, but I appreciate you sitting through it, and hopefully you enjoyed it. All right, let's pray. Heavenly Father, I do pray that we can learn from history. Then we can be careful to avoid various mistakes. I pray that each of us could have the confidence in our beliefs and the honesty about our own beliefs to be public about them in a way that leaves us open to correction or we retain the ability to correct others. Lord, I pray that iron could sharpen iron in this church, that we could build each other up in the faith and in the truth, correct one another when necessary, clear up misunderstandings where they are present. And we pray, Lord, that you would use our desire to do this winsomely to affect our presentation and our love for others. Please overwhelm us with love so that we are driven to be careful and kind and full of grace when we speak the truth. But keep us anchored on the truth. Keep us always looking at Christ, focusing on Christ and pointing others to Christ. And we give you thanks for him and his work and your kindness to us and the work of the spirit. And we pray it all in the name of your son, Jesus. Amen.