Part 3

In the preface to the Canons of Dort, Synod characterized the challenges she faced and the promise on which she relied to face those challenges. The preface characterized the Christian life as a “this wretched pilgrimage.” It is one, however, that is conducted under the shepherding care of Jesus, our high priest, who has “entered the heavenly sanctuary to go to his Father,” who is fulfilling the Great Promise behind the Great Commission: “A Lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age” (Matt 28:20).

Synod’s characterization of the opponents of the Reformed faith in the Netherlands is instructive too. She mentions two threats. First, “the public force of enemies and the ungodly violence of heretics” and second, “the masked subtleties of seducers.” The former is an evident reference to Philip II (King of Spain), who sought to exterminate the Reformed in the Netherlands. Under his campaign about 12,000 Reformed Christians were murdered at the hands of the Spanish. The subtle seducers refers to Arminius and the Remonstrants. Indeed, absent the Great Promise, the churches would have been “naked without the beneficial consolation of his promised presence” and oppressed and seduced.

The Remonstrant (Arminian) narrative and self-identity is that of victim. They see Arminius as the innocent victim of unwarranted hostility. They see the Remonstrants as righteous protesters unjustly treated. The Synod, however, painted a very different picture. According to the Reformed, it was not Arminius nor his followers who were victims but the Reformed churches:

This Church has been attacked, first secretly and then publicly, by Jacobus Arminius and his followers (bearing the name of Remonstrants). They did this by means of various old and new errors. These flourishing churches, being persistently disturbed by offensive disputes and schisms, have been brought into such grave peril that they were in danger of being consumed by a dreadful fire of discord.

I have elsewhere noted that Synod characterized the Remonstrants as heretics. They did so because they saw the Remonstrants not merely disagreeing on minor or technical points (e.g., the logical order of the decrees). They saw the program of the Remonstrants as an all-out assault on the Reformation and the gospel. Under the Remonstrant revisions the covenant of grace becomes a covenant of works. The gospel becomes law and assurance of faith is destroyed.

The first thing that Synod confessed against the Remonstrants was not, as the (early 20th century) TULIP arrangement suggests, “total depravity” but unconditional grace. Properly, the expression unconditional grace is redundant (since by nature grace is unconditional) but I use it because of what the Arminians were teaching: that election is conditioned upon foreseen faith (fides praevisa). In that case, grace is no longer grace since, in the Remonstrant scheme, our faith is imputed to us and is the product, to some degree, of our cooperation with grace. As we have seen already, the Remonstrants made our salvation contingent upon our faithfulness and perseverance. Remember, they re-defined grace as resistible. In their scheme, our free cooperation with grace makes “grace” efficacious. Without it, then redemption and grace remains nothing but a potential.

We know this because Synod summarized the Remonstrant view in the Rejection of Errors (RE) under each head of doctrine. In RE 1.1 Synod declared: “We reject the error of those who teach:”

Who teach: That the will of God to save those who would believe and would persevere in faith and in the obedience of faith is the whole and entire decree of election, and that nothing else concerning this decree has been revealed in God’s Word. For these deceive the simple and plainly contradict the Scriptures, which declare that God will not only save those who will believe, but that He has also from eternity chosen certain particular persons to whom, above others, He will grant in time, both faith in Christ and perseverance; as it is written “I have revealed Your name to the men whom You have given Me out of the world” (Jn 17:6), and “as many as had been appointed to eternal life believed” (Acts 13:48). And “He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and without blame before Him” (Eph 1:4).

If we did not know that Synod was attacking the Remonstrants we might think that they were addressing some major evangelical and ostensibly “Reformed” figures, e.g., John Piper and others who teach two stages of salvation (initial and final), the last of which depends, in part, on our perseverance and obedience. This is the doctrine of the self-described Federal Visionists and it was that of the Remonstrants. They turned the covenant of grace into a covenant of works.

Synod confessed in CD 1.1:

As all men have sinned in Adam, lie under the curse, and are deserving of eternal death, God would have done no injustice by leaving them all to perish and delivering them over to condemnation on account of sin, according to the words of the apostle: “that every mouth may be stopped, and all the world may be brought under the judgment of God” (Rom 3:19). And: “for all have sinned, and fall short of the glory of God” (Rom 3:23). And: “For the wages of sin is death” (Rom 6:23).

To combat that notion, Synod started where Scripture started: our inability. This is not the major topic of the head of doctrine but it is a necessary precondition. We cannot understand the true nature of grace until we have some idea of our desperate need. The Remonstrants had re-defined the consequences of sin. According to them we are not, in Adam, dead in sins and trespasses.

In the nature of justice, God owed us nothing but judgment. Grace is favor to hell-deserving sinners. Grace is not a mere potential or assistance with which we cooperate. As we have seen, this is how the Remonstrants re-defined grace in the 3rd and 4th heads of their 1610 Remonstrance. Real grace, i.,e., grace as it is, is favor earned for elect sinners by the righteous Savior Jesus. That favor is bestowed on the elect, in time, despite their demerits. “The wages of sin is death but the gift of God is eternal life.” Grace is an unconditional gift to sinners.