Theopedia

Moise Amyraut

Overview

Moïse Amyraut (1596-1664), also known by the Latinized Moses Amyraldus, was a French Reformed theologian and professor at the Huguenot academy of Saumur.1 He gave his name to Amyraldism, also called hypothetical or conditional universalism, a modification of Reformed teaching on the scope of Christ’s atonement that his contemporaries at Saumur and, later, theologians in England came to hold.2

Life and Ministry

Amyraut taught theology at the Huguenot academy of Saumur, in France, during “the second quarter of the seventeenth century.”3 He had studied under John Cameron, also a professor at Saumur, and it was out of Cameron’s teaching that Amyraut and a fellow student, Louis Testard, developed the position that came to bear Amyraut’s own name.4 Charles Hodge records Amyraut as having died in 1664.5

Theological Contribution

Amyraut’s theological contribution is a single proposal: a scheme of the divine decrees, regarding the atonement of Christ, “designed to take a middle ground between” Reformed and Arminian teaching.6 Charles Hodge summarizes Amyraut’s own five points as he taught them:

That the motive impelling God to redeem men was benevolence, or love to men in general. From this motive He sent His Son to make the salvation of all men possible. God, in virtue of a decretum universale hypotheticum, offers salvation to all men if they believe in Christ. All men have a natural ability to repent and believe. But as this natural ability was counteracted by a moral inability, God determined to give his efficacious grace to a certain number of the human race, and thus to secure their salvation.2

A. A. Hodge’s Outlines of Theology casts the same scheme as an ordered sequence of decrees and compares it directly with the other two systems: “The French view agrees with the Reformed and differs from the Arminian view in making the sovereign good pleasure of God the sole ground of election; while it differs from the Reformed and agrees with the Arminian in making the decree of redemption precede the decree of election.”7 Hodge states the Saumur professors’ own order of decrees as: God decreed to create man, to permit man’s fall, to provide in Christ’s mediation “salvation for all men,” and then, foreseeing that none would repent and believe if left to themselves, to elect some to whom he would give “the necessary graces of repentance and faith.”3

Historical Significance

The French Reformed church’s own national synod examined Amyraut’s teaching and, according to A. A. Hodge, its “novelties were explained away before the French Synod, 1637, and virtually condemned.”8 The sharpest formal response came from outside France: in 1675 the Formula Consensus Helvetica, composed by John Henry Heidegger with Francis Turretin and Luke Gernler, was adopted by the Swiss Reformed churches specifically to unite them “in condemning and excluding that modified form of Calvinism, which in that century emanated from the Theological School of Saumur, represented by Amyraldus, Placaeus, etc.”9 Charles Hodge notes that in Europe the position soon passed away, its advocates either returning to the older Reformed doctrine or moving further into Arminianism.10

The position was carried into England by Richard Baxter, whose Universal Redemption of Mankind by the Lord Jesus Christ “contributed substantially to the introduction of Amyraldism in England,” and by Baxter’s contemporary Isaac Barrow, who defended the same hypothetical universalism and moved further still into outright Arminianism.11 There it also became allied with Arminianism in shaping neonomianism, a soteriology grounding a believer’s justification in his own sincere obedience rather than in Christ’s imputed righteousness.12 Because it keeps unconditional election while extending Christ’s satisfaction in scope to all people, Amyraut’s position is often called “four-point Calvinism” today.8

Related Doctrines

References

  1. Roger Nicole, “Moyse Amyraut (1596-1664) and the Controversy on Universal Grace, First Phase (1634-1637)” (PhD diss., Harvard University, 1966), cited in Matthew Barrett, Reclaiming Monergism: The Case for Sovereign Grace in Salvation (Phillipsburg, NJ: P&R Publishing, 2011), bibliography. ↩

  2. Charles Hodge, Systematic Theology, vol. 2 (New York: Charles Scribner and Company, 1872), 319-320. ↩ ↩2

  3. Archibald Alexander Hodge, Outlines of Theology (New York: Robert Carter and Brothers, 1879), question 43: “These theological professors at Saumur, during the second quarter of the seventeenth century, taught that God — 1st. Decreed to create man. 2d. To permit man to fall. 3d. To provide, in the mediation of Christ, salvation for all men. 4th. But, foreseeing that if men were left to themselves none would repent and believe, therefore he sovereignly elected some to whom he decreed to give the necessary graces of repentance and faith.” ↩ ↩2

  4. Herman Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics: Abridged in One Volume, ed. John Bolt (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2011), chap. 16, “The Exalted Lord Christ”: “John Cameron taught there, and his students Moïse Amyraut and Louis Testard developed the position that came to bear Amyraut’s name.” ↩

  5. Hodge, Systematic Theology, vol. 2, 319: “Amyraut (died 1664), Professor in the French Protestant Seminary at Saumur.” ↩

  6. Hodge, Systematic Theology, vol. 2, 320: “This scheme is sometimes designated as ‘universalismus hypotheticus.’ It was designed to take a middle ground between Augustinianism and Arminianism” (Hodge uses “Augustinianism” for the Reformed doctrine of election he has just described). ↩

  7. A. A. Hodge, Outlines of Theology, question 46. ↩

  8. A. A. Hodge, Outlines of Theology, 418-419. ↩ ↩2

  9. A. A. Hodge, Outlines of Theology, 127-128. ↩

  10. Hodge, Systematic Theology, vol. 2, 320-321: “This theory of the French theologians soon passed away as far as the Reformed churches in Europe were concerned. Its advocates either returned to the old doctrine, or passed on to the more advanced system of the Arminians.” ↩

  11. Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics: Abridged in One Volume, chap. 16, note 18. ↩

  12. Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics: Abridged in One Volume, chap. 17, “The Order of Salvation.” ↩