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Encyclopedia Britannica - Main :: APO-ARN |
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ARMINIUS, JACOBUS (1560-1609) , Dutch theologian, author of the modified reformed theology that receives its name of Arminian from him, was born at Oudewater, South Holland, on the loth of October s56o. Arminius is a Latinized form of his patronymic Hermanns or Hermansen. His father, Hermann Jakobs, a cutler, died while he was an infant, leaving a widow and three children. Theodorus Aemilius, a priest, who had turned Protestant
Coornhert argued, in private conferences and public disputations, that it was wrong to punish heretics, and his great
bear the further expenses of his education. In 1582 he went to Geneva, studied there awhile under Theodore
popish " leanings. Next year he was called to Amsterdam, and there, in 1588, was ordained. He soon acquired the reputation of being a good preacher and faithful pastor.. He was commissioned to organize the educational system of the city, and is said to have done it well. He greatly distinguished himself by fidelity to duty during a plague that devastated Amsterdam in 1602. In 1603 he was called, in succession to Franz Junius, to a theological professorship at Leiden, which he held till his death on the loth of October 1609. Arminius is best known as the founder of the anti-Calvinistic school in Reformed theology, which created the Remonstrant Church in Holland (see REMONSTRANTS), and contributed to form, the Arminian tendency or party in England. He was a man of mild and liberal spirit, broadened by varied culture, constitutionally averse from narrow views and enforced uniformity. He lived in a period of severe systematizing. The Reformed strengthened itself against the Roman Catholic theology by working itself, on the one hand, into vigorous logical consistency, and supporting itself, on the other, on the supreme authority of the Scriptures. Calvin's first principle, the absolute sovereignty of God, had been so applied as to make the divine decree determine alike the acts and the destinies of men; and his formal principle had been so construed as to invest his system with the authority of the source whence it professed to have been drawn
Coornhert could not plead for the toleration of heretics without assailing the dominant Calvinism, and so he opposed a conditional to its unconditional predestination. The two ministers of Delft, who had debated the point with him, had, the better to turn his arguments, descended from thesupralapsarian to the infralapsarian position, i.e. made the divine decree, instead of precede and determine, succeed the Fall. This seemed to the high Calvinists of Holland a grave heresy. Arminius, fresh from Geneva, familiar with the dialectics of Beza, appeared to many the man able to speak the needed word, and so, in 1589, he was simultaneously invited by the ecclesiastical court of Amsterdam to refute Coornhert, and by Martin Lydius, professor at Franeker, to combat the two infralapsarian ministers of Delft. Thus led to confront the questions of necessity and free will, his own views became unsettled, and the further he pursued his inquiries the more he was inclined to assert the freedom of man and limit the range of the unconditional decrees of God. This change became gradually more apparent in his preaching and in his conferences with his clerical associates, and occasioned much controversy in the ecclesiastical courts where, however, he successfully defended his position. The controversy was embittered and the differences sharpened by his appointment to the professorship at Leiden. He had as colleague Franz Gomarus, a strong supralapsarian, perfervid, irrepressible; and their collisions, personal, official, political, tended to develop and define their respective positions.Arminius died, worn out by uncongenial controversy and ecclesiastical persecution, before his system had been elaborated into the logical consistency it attained in the hands of his celebrated successor, Simon Episcopius; but though inchoate in detail, it was in its principles clear and coherent enough. These may be thus stated: 1. The decree of God is, when it concerns His own actions, absolute, but when it concerns man's, conditional, i.e. the decree relative to the Saviour to be appointed and the salvation to be provided is absolute, but the decree relative to the persons saved or condemned is made to depend on the actsbelief and repentance in the one case, unbelief and impenitence in the otherof the persons themselves. 2. The providence or government of God, while sovereign, is exercised in harmony with the nature of the creatures governed, i.e. the sovereignty of God is so exercised as to be compatible with the freedom of man. 3. Man is by original
4. Divine grace originates, maintains and perfects all the good in man, so much so that he cannot, though regenerate, conceive, will or do any good thing without it. 5. The saints possess, by the grace of the Holy Spirit, sufficient strength to persevere to the end in spite of sin and the flesh, but may so decline from sound doctrine as to cause divine grace to be ineffectual. 6. Every believer may be assured of his own salvation. 7. It is possible for a regenerate man to live without sin. Arminius's works are mostly occasional treatises drawn
The works of Arminius (in Latin) were published in a single quarto volume at Leiden in 1629, at Frankfort in 1631 and 1635. Two volumes of an English translation, with copious notes, by James Nichols
Guthrie
Nichols
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