Jacob Arminius's Relationship with Rome

Calvinist theologian Richard A. Muller confesses that “Arminius was certainly not a crypto-Catholic or a Jesuit sympathizer.”¹ Though charged in the Preface to the Acts of the Synod of Dort as having “received a letter from the pope promising financial rewards in return for advocacy of Roman theological views,”² Arminius fiercely opposed Roman Catholicism and its papacy, having stated just before his death: “I commend my soul, when it quits the body, into the hands of God . . . to the tranquility and peace, according to the Word of God, which becomes the Christian name; excluding the Papacy, with which no unity of faith, no bond of piety or Christian peace, can be maintained.”³

From Arminius’s own pen comes proof that the Calvinists of the Synod of Dort sought nothing more than to calumniate the good and godly name of Arminius and his followers, the Remonstrants. A certain minister in the Church of Amsterdam, where Arminius was pastor for fifteen years, claimed that Arminius believed the Pope was a member of the body of Christ (which was a scandalous confession during Arminius’s post-Reformation era). Arminius responds: “I openly declare that I do not own the Roman Pontiff to be a member of Christ’s body; but I account him an enemy, a traitor, a sacrilegious and blasphemous man, a tyrant, and a violent usurper of most unjust domination over the Church, the man of sin, the son of perdition, that most notorious outlaw. . . .”⁴

Furthermore, Arminius attributes the following titles to the Pope, and thinks that they are justified:

Others disparage him with titles quite contrary [to the lovely titles mentioned previously], such as, the adulterer and pimp of the Church, the false prophet, the destroyer and subverter of the Church, the enemy of God and the Antichrist, the wicked and perverse servant, who neither discharges the duties of a Bishop, nor is worthy to bear the name. Uniting ourselves with the band of those who bestow on the Roman Pontiff the epithets last cited, we assert that he is unworthy of the honourable titles which precede them, and that the latter disparaging epithets are attributed to him through his just deserts. . . .”⁵

In what sense, then, can the Calvinists of Dort conclude that Arminius was in any way in connection with or favored Rome? To admit thus is to expose one’s own prejudice and dishonest motives. I have hesitated to post Arminius’s thoughts regarding the Pope and the Roman Catholic Church. My goal is not to offend Roman Catholics. My intention is solely to silence Calvinists who attribute Arminius’s theology (and soteriology) to that of Roman Catholicism (to say nothing of Pelagian- or semi-Pelagianism).

Pope Paul V, born Camillo Borghese (1552-1621), succeeding Pope Leo XI (1535-1605), was head of the Roman Catholic Church (1605-1621) during the time when Arminius penned his words against both the Pope and the Church. There was nothing about the person or attitude of Pope Paul V which triggered Arminius’s response. What Arminius wrote against the Roman Pontiff applied to all Popes, not just the current Pope.

In short, Arminius was no friend of Rome, the Pope, or Roman Catholic dogma. Francis Gomarus, Arminius’s fiercest supralapsarian opponent, argued that Arminius’s theology, as taught in class at the University of Leiden, “agreed with the Pelagians and the Jesuits.”⁶ One expects such unwarranted, emotional outbursts from supralapsarians like Gomarus. Arminius’s theology had nothing in common with either Pelagianism or Roman Catholicism (that of the Jesuits). Gomarus had no appreciation for Arminius’s use of scholasticism, which varied from Reformed teaching proper. Muller writes:

Like virtually every other Protestant theologian of his day, however, Arminius did dip heavily into medieval scholastic sources. And it is also the case that even when some account is taken of the polemical nature of the accusations made against him, the views of the theologians noted in the accusations -- Thomas Aquinas and two of the three Jesuits mentioned, Molina and Suárez -- do appear to have influenced his thought at certain crucial points.⁷

Even granting this fact, however, Arminius yet remained in the Reformed Protestant tradition. His aversion to Roman Catholic teaching and refutation of Pelagian doctrine (to say nothing of his holding to the five solas) cast him in a Reformed light. Notice Muller’s admission that Arminius was like “every other Protestant theologian of his day,” who dipped heavily into medieval scholastic sources.

We need to be reminded that Christian doctrine, including our views on the Atonement, God’s sovereignty, and His Decrees, did not begin with the Reformation. We must not overlook nearly fifteen hundred years of Church teaching. But we must cling to what is good and throw away what is lacking in truth. We also cannot ignore the fact that even supralapsarian Gomarus drew from the scholastic tradition. Muller sums up the difference between Arminius and Gomarus’s use of scholasticism:

The theological or interpretive grid placed by Arminius over his reading of the body of Christian doctrine was different from the grid employed by Gomarus: the latter stood more firmly in the confessional tradition of the Reformed churches and drew on the scholastic tradition in an attempt to create an orthodox Reformed system; the former, whatever one decides about his relation to the confessional tradition of the Reformed churches, drew on the scholastic tradition, including the contemporary efforts of Suárez and Molina, in order to move away from what he considered to be some of the more problematic formulations of his orthodox [though that is disputed!] Reformed colleagues and contemporaries.⁸

However, what cannot be denied by his opponents, admits Muller, is Arminius’s biblicism.⁹ Arminius’s opponents “were as intent on developing a biblical theology as he was, and their scholasticism was certainly the equal of Arminius’s own.”¹⁰ What is most plain regarding Arminius’s scholastic theology, in conclusion, is its antagonism to Roman Catholicism. All charges against Arminius attending to Roman Catholic dogma are to be dismissed as baseless, and only serves to implicate the one making the charge.

__________

¹ Richard A. Muller, God, Creation, and Providence in the Thought of Jacob Arminius: Sources and Directions of Scholastic Protestantism in the Era of Early Orthodoxy (Grand Rapids: Baker Book House, 1991), 29.

² Ibid.

³ Kaspar Brandt, The Life of James Arminius, D. D., trans. John Guthrie (Charleston, SC: BiblioLife, LLC, 2009), 298.

⁴ James Arminius, The Works of Arminius, three volumes, trans. James and William Nichols (Grand Rapids: Baker Book House, 1996), 1:298-99.

⁵ Ibid., 2:264-65.

⁶ Muller, 28.

⁷ Ibid., 29.

⁸ Ibid., 30.

⁹ Ibid.

¹⁰ Ibid.