Fred
Arminius on the Assurance of Salvation. The
Context, Roots, and Shape of the Leiden
Debate, 1603-1609. By Stanglin, Keith D. Leiden/Boston: Brill, 2007, xviii
+ 285 pp., $143.00 hardback.
A
number of studies on Arminius have come out in the last few decades. The author
of this published dissertation gives us a survey of these works in the
following online report: http://www.martinsvianna.net/dossies/TRENDS_IN_ARMINIUS_STUDIES.pdf.
The present study focuses on the pastoral concern of assurance of salvation
that was of great importance to Jacob Arminius. It is based on Stanglin’s Ph.D.
work in 2006 at Calvin Theological Seminary in conjunction with research done
at Universiteit Leiden in
2004.
Part one begins by focusing on the
public and private disputations of Arminius in the context of his teaching at Leiden University.
He is compared and contrasted with his colleagues and identified as a scholastic
theologian in the early years of the Reformed orthodoxy. The author
demonstrates why Arminius was motivated to speak, write and defend his position
against Gomarus, Kuchlinus and Trecaltius, colleagues who held superlapsarian
views on predestination. Arminius was concerned that God would be accused of
being the ultimate author of evil and that believers would fail to find
assurance of salvation in a deterministic system of theology, hidden and
inscrutable to the logic of humans.
Part two of the study looks at the
ontology of salvation and part three at its epistemology. Arminius wanted the
doctrine of predestination to be formulated in such a way that it led the
believer to assurance. He defined assurance not as security but as certainty, based
on simple faith primarily and by evidence of good works secondarily. Security was
seen as a “lack of care,” a definition going back to Augustine and traced
through to John Calvin, who called it “carnal security.” Security and despair
are twin evils that war against assurance. Security leads to overconfidence or
pride in the Christian walk, while despair goes in the opposite direction
toward doubt and disbelief.
Arminius recognized that one’s views
on predestination influenced one’s entire soteriology, especially regarding the
history and order of salvation. His desire was to harmonize the twofold love of
God, that is love for justice and for humanity, in such a way that the ways of
God could be defended with mankind. The connection of all of this with
assurance was obvious to him. Predestination was conditioned on God foreseeing
human faith, while at the same time balancing faith as a pure gift from God, capable
of being resisted yet accepted by the human will. Assurance was the normative
consequence of such faith (p. 100).
Because humans can resist the will
of God, apostasy is possible. David’s killing of Uriah presents an example for
Arminius of one true believer who did for a while fall away from God. If David
had not repented prior to his death, he would have been damned (Works 2:725). There is thus a certain
class of sins that effect apostasy (p. 137). Nevertheless, Arminius believed
that true believers persevere in the faith, and hence distinguished between
believers (false or temporary?) and the elect (pp. 140-41).
What
undermines assurance in believers is false security. In general, the Reformed,
according to Arminius, contributed to this problem through the doctrine of
unconditional election. If God’s good will and particular predestination is
unconditional and unknown, this leads to agnosticism. How does one know that
God is willing to save anyone? If God truly loves all of humanity, however, and
his election is conditioned on human faith, there can be no question regarding
favoritism or injustice (p. 232). For Arminius, doubt remains for the believer
as to the future. Only God can know for sure who will persevere in true faith.
For the Reformed, however, the future is guaranteed, but is the believer truly
elect? Did God will to save a certain person? An answer is impossible, undermining
assurance for one’s status on assurance from an a priori perspective (p. 233).
Keith Stanglin concludes his study
with an interesting question: “Can we number Arminius among the Reformed?” He
was in virtual agreement with his colleagues at Leiden on the operations of grace, with the
exception of its resistibility. In addition, he believed that election was
conditioned upon a person’s acceptance or rejection of God’s grace, which was
in contrast to what his colleagues taught. Arminius believed that he was
faithful to his Reformed tradition and confessions. He died in good standing as
a Reformed theologian at the University
of Leiden. He believed
that he was broadening the scope of Reformed tradition, and that his view of
“conditional predestination had a chance for survival” (p. 242). His overall
impact on evangelicalism is immeasurable, and this essay does an excellent job
of informing us of its place within the historical and theological context of
his times.
