Theopedia

Five articles of Remonstrance

Definition

The Five articles of Remonstrance are the founding document of Arminian theology: a statement of five points on predestination, the extent of Christ’s atonement, human ability, grace, and perseverance, drawn up in 1610 by followers of Jacobus Arminius after his death the previous year.1 Addressed to the States of Holland and West Friesland as a “remonstrance,” a formal protest, against the predestinarian teaching of the Belgic Confession, the document gave its authors the name “Remonstrants.”1 The Synod of Dort examined and unanimously condemned all five articles in 1618-19.1

Historical Origin

James Arminius taught theology at the University of Leiden from 1602 until his death in 1609, developing doubts about the Reformed doctrine of predestination that he had first raised while defending it against its critics into a distinct alternative to the Calvinism of the Dutch Reformed churches.2 After his death, forty-six of his followers, led by Johannes Uitenbogaert and Simon Episcopius, gathered at Gouda in 1610 to draft a Remonstrance stating their position in five articles.3 They presented the document to the civil authorities “praying to be allowed to hold their places in the church without being subjected by the ecclesiastical courts to vexatious examinations as to their orthodoxy.”1

The theological substance of the five articles was not new; it systematized positions Arminius himself had already taken on conditional election, universal atonement, and resistible grace.2 Richard Muller, quoted by Barrett, describes how the third and fourth articles fit together: “The third article argues the necessity of grace if fallen man is to choose the good and come to belief. In the fourth article, this insistence upon prevenient grace is drawn into relation with the synergism of the first two articles. Prevenient and subsequent assisting grace may be resisted and rejected: ultimately the work of salvation, in its efficacy and application, rests on human choice.”4

A 1611 conference at the Hague between six representatives of each side failed to resolve the dispute.2 Because the 1610 articles stated their position only briefly, the Synod of Dort later called on the Remonstrants to set out a fuller account of their views, which produced a separate, longer document known as the Sententiae Remonstrantium, or “Opinions of the Remonstrants,” in 1618.5 The Synod’s own censure fell on both documents together, examining the original five articles alongside this fuller restatement of the same position.

The Five Articles

The Remonstrance states its position in five numbered articles, quoted here from Philip Schaff’s edition.6

Article I: Conditional Election

That God, by an eternal, unchangeable purpose in Jesus Christ his Son, before the foundation of the world, hath determined, out of the fallen, sinful race of men, to save in Christ, for Christ’s sake, and through Christ, those who, through the grace of the Holy Ghost, shall believe on this his Son Jesus, and shall persevere in this faith and obedience of faith, through this grace, even to the end; and, on the other hand, to leave the incorrigible and unbelieving in sin and under wrath, and to condemn them as alienate from Christ, according to the word of the gospel in John iii. 36: “He that believeth on the Son hath everlasting life: and he that believeth not the Son shall not see life; but the wrath of God abideth on him,” and according to other passages of Scripture also.6

Article II: Universal Atonement

That, agreeably thereto, Jesus Christ, the Saviour of the world, died for all men and for every man, so that he has obtained for them all, by his death on the cross, redemption and the forgiveness of sins; yet that no one actually enjoys this forgiveness of sins except the believer, according to the word of the Gospel of John iii. 16: “God so loved the world that he gave his only-begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.” And in the First Epistle of John ii. 2: “And he is the propitiation for our sins; and not for ours only, but also for the sins of the whole world.”6

Article III: Human Inability

That man has not saving grace of himself, nor of the energy of his free will, inasmuch as he, in the state of apostasy and sin, can of and by himself neither think, will, nor do any thing that is truly good (such as saving Faith eminently is); but that it is needful that he be born again of God in Christ, through his Holy Spirit, and renewed in understanding, inclination, or will, and all his powers, in order that he may rightly understand, think, will, and effect what is truly good, according to the Word of Christ, John xv. 5: “Without me ye can do nothing.”6

Article IV: Resistible Grace

That this grace of God is the beginning, continuance, and accomplishment of all good, even to this extent, that the regenerate man himself, without prevenient or assisting, awakening, following and cooperative grace, can neither think, will, nor do good, nor withstand any temptations to evil; so that all good deeds or movements, that can be conceived, must be ascribed to the grace of God in Christ. But as respects the mode of the operation of this grace, it is not irresistible, inasmuch as it is written concerning many, that they have resisted the Holy Ghost. Acts vii., and elsewhere in many places.6

Article V: Perseverance Left Undecided

That those who are incorporated into Christ by a true faith, and have thereby become partakers of his life-giving 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 Scripture, before we ourselves can teach it with the full persuasion of our minds.6

The Remonstrants closed by stating that “these Articles, thus set forth and taught,” they held “agreeable to the Word of God, tending to edification, and, as regards this argument, sufficient for salvation, so that it is not necessary or edifying to rise higher or to descend deeper.”6

Reformed Response

The States General called a General Synod that met at Dordrecht through 1618-19, consisting of pastors, elders, and theological professors from the Dutch churches together with delegates from the Reformed churches of England, Scotland, Germany, and Switzerland, to examine the Remonstrant articles against Scripture and the Reformed confessional tradition.1 Muller’s verdict, quoted by Barrett, summarizes the Synod’s conclusion: Arminian doctrine was “clearly beyond the bounds of Reformed confessional orthodoxy,” condemning “predestination grounded on prior human choice” and denying “a grace that is both resistible and acceptable by man,” while affirming instead the depth of original sin, a limited efficacy of Christ’s satisfaction, and the perseverance of the elect by grace alone.7 The Synod “unanimously condemned the doctrines of the Arminians, and in their Articles confirmed the common Calvinistic faith of the Reformed churches”1 in what became the Canons of Dordt.

Reception

The Remonstrance did not disappear with the Synod’s condemnation. The Remonstrant Brotherhood continued in the Netherlands, and Simon Episcopius restated the same positions in his own Arminian Confession of 1621.8 Its reception spread beyond the Dutch context that condemned it: Bavinck records that in 1724 the Lutheran historian Johann Lorenz von Mosheim judged that “the Five Articles of the Remonstrants contain the pure Lutheran doctrine.”9 Bavinck traces that verdict to Lutheran theology’s own later turn toward an antecedent-and-consequent-will account of election, a position close to the Remonstrants’ even though Lutheranism had not originated from the Dutch controversy.9 Arminian theology reentered English-speaking Protestantism through John Wesley, whose Methodism built on a modified form of the same five points.10

Related Doctrines

References

  1. Archibald Alexander Hodge, Outlines of Theology (New York: Robert Carter and Brothers, 1879), chap. 6, “Comparison of Systems,” Q. 12. ↩ ↩2 ↩3 ↩4 ↩5 ↩6

  2. Matthew Michael Barrett, “Monergism in the Calvinist Tradition,” in “Reclaiming Monergism: The Case for Sovereign Grace in Effectual Calling and Regeneration” (PhD diss., The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, 2011), 21-87. ↩ ↩2 ↩3

  3. Barrett, “Monergism in the Calvinist Tradition,” 72. ↩

  4. Barrett, “Monergism in the Calvinist Tradition,” 72-73, quoting Richard Muller, “Arminius and Arminianism,” 34-35. ↩

  5. Matthew Michael Barrett, “Arminian Synergism in Theological Perspective,” in “Reclaiming Monergism: The Case for Sovereign Grace in Effectual Calling and Regeneration” (PhD diss., The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, 2011), 253-316, 301. ↩

  6. The Five Arminian Articles (1610), text as reproduced in Philip Schaff, The Creeds of Christendom, vol. 3, The Creeds of the Evangelical Protestant Churches (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1877). ↩ ↩2 ↩3 ↩4 ↩5 ↩6 ↩7

  7. Matthew Michael Barrett, “Monergism in the Calvinist Tradition,” in “Reclaiming Monergism: The Case for Sovereign Grace in Effectual Calling and Regeneration” (PhD diss., The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, 2011), 73, quoting Richard Muller, “Arminius and Arminianism,” 34-35. ↩

  8. Barrett, “Arminian Synergism in Theological Perspective,” 259-60, citing Simon Episcopius, The Arminian Confession of 1621. ↩

  9. Herman Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics: Abridged in One Volume, ed. John Bolt (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2011), chap. 9, “The Triune God and His Counsel.” ↩ ↩2

  10. Matthew Michael Barrett, “Introduction,” in “Reclaiming Monergism: The Case for Sovereign Grace in Effectual Calling and Regeneration” (PhD diss., The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, 2011), 1-20. ↩