Early Life and Education
Jacob Arminius is one of the most influential figures of the Reformation, yet he is simultaneously one of the least appreciated and least understood. Many are those who find refuge in his shadow; few understand who he was or what he stood for.
Arminius lived in the years following Holland’s newly acquired freedom from Spain and the Roman Catholic church. Holland was the largest province in a shaky alliance known as the United Provinces of the Netherlands.[1] Newfound political freedom also meant newfound religious freedom in a country formerly ruled by the state-church union of the Roman Catholics. The Holland Arminius knew was searching for its identity within the vestiges of Protestantism.
Arminius was born Jacob Harmenszoon in Oudewater, Holland in 1560, the youngest son of Harmon Jacobszoon and Elborch Jacobsdochter. His father was a blacksmith with an extensive weapons trade throughout Holland. “His father died either when he was an infant or more likely, before he was born.”[2] His mother was from a well-established Oudewater family from whom she inherited substantial property. His given name, Jacob, was the given name of both of his grandfathers. “As a university student Arminius Latinized his name, first to Jacobus Hermannus, then to Jacobus Arminius. His given name has been commonly translated as James.”[3]
Two men stepped in to fill the void left by his father’s decease. His mother’s cousin, Dirk Amelsgersz, a “learned, Protestant-minded man who saw to Arminius’ early learning in Latin, Greek, and theology,” cared for young Arminius between the ages of six and fourteen. At his death, another cousin of his mother, Roelof van Roijen van Schadenbroek, took guardianship of Arminius. He took Arminius to Marburg where he was enrolled as a student at the University of Marburg. The year was 1574.
On August 7, 1575, Spanish troops invaded his hometown of Oudewater, cruelly killing many of the occupants. He returned on foot from Marburg to do what he could to deal with the fallout of the Spanish invasion. To his sorrow, his mother and all of his siblings were among the victims. Peter Bertius, a leading Dutch minister in Amsterdam, took him in.
When William of Orange established a university in Leiden, Peter sent Arminius and his son (also named Peter Bertius, who became a lifelong friend of Arminius) to be enrolled there. He studied there from 1576 to 1581. In 1582, he traveled to Switzerland to study at the Genevan Academy under Beza, John Calvin’s successor. Here at Geneva was his first encounter with the high Calvinism (supralapsarianism) he would later critique. It is not known whether or not he embraced high Calvinism at this point. “Arminius’ later ‘mild Calvinism’ was well represented in Geneva among other Dutch students and even in the faculty. There is no direct evidence that Arminius followed Beza’s supralapsarianism.”[4]
Whatever the case, the great frictions between Arminius and the Calvinists were not yet present. Beza, a high Calvinist himself, highly approved of Arminius during his time there. He wrote to Arminius’ financial supporters in Amsterdam, describing Arminius as “most worthy of your kindness and liberality.”[5] When Arminius returned to Amsterdam, Beza said that Arminius possessed “a mind most admirably prepared for fulfil his duty, if it should please the Lord God to accept the use of the young man’s ministry for His own work in His Church.”[6] This lack of tension between the parties speaks of the general openness that was still present at this time; that openness disappeared in subsequent years as the Dutch Reformed church hardened its views.
During his studies in Switzerland, Arminius traveled to Basal for a time, probably in the summer of 1583. The faculty there “esteemed Arminius so highly that they offered to promote him to doctor of theology.”[7] He humbly declined. His good friend Peter Bertius said later, “For the proposed honor he thanked the reverend and learned faculty, but with the greatest modesty begged to decline the acceptance of it—alleging as a reason, that to bestow a Doctor’s degree on a person so youthful in appearance as he was, would tend to diminish the dignity and respect which should always be attached to that sacred title.”
By 1588 he had completed his studies and was back in Amsterdam. On February 17 of that year he began preaching trial sermons on Sunday evenings. He was ordained on Sunday evening, August 27 of the same year. “Thus he became the first native Hollander to exercise ministry in the Reformed church in Amsterdam.”[8]
Pastorate
Jacob Arminius was well received as a minister in Amsterdam, and his years there evidence grace, diligence, and divine blessing. “He was clearly well liked and respected as both a pastor and a preacher.”[9] Though we often think of him as primarily a theologian, during these years he poured his energies into pastoring. In fact, he spent more of his life ministering as a pastor than as a theologian. Fifteen years he served as a pastor in Amsterdam; only seven were spent as a professor in Leiden. As pastor, “he exercised the whole range of pastoral duties. He made pastoral calls, visiting the sick even during outbreaks of the plague, admonishing the wayward, arguing with the erring. His sermons found favor, especially by the regent class.”
As a preacher he gained the affectionate respect of all who heard him. As his dear friend Peter Bertius later related, “There was in him a certain incredible gravity softened down by a cheerful amenity; his voice was rather weak, yet sweet, harmonious, and piercing; and his powers of persuasion were most admirable. The persuasion which he employed was rendered so efficacious, by the force and weight of his arguments, the importance of his sentiments, and by the authority of the scriptures which he adduced, that no man ever listened to him who did not confess himself to be greatly moved.”[10]
He was quite tolerant of other segments of the Christian movement, too, provided they lived according to Scripture. The Mennonites in his region appreciated his tolerance. Though he was commissioned to write a refutation of the Anabaptists, he never completed it, giving continual excuses as to why he didn’t bring it to fruition. While it’s not clear whether he intentionally neglected finishing this paper, it is plain from his life in general that he sought to “live peaceably with all men” (Rom. 12:18) as much as it was in his power.
He wrote extensively during his Amsterdam years, though he published none of it. In fact, the only thing published during his life was his doctoral thesis (which he wrote on his instatement at the University of Leiden). He was not only a dedicated academic and diligent pastor, but he was also a devoted husband and father. During these fifteen years at Amsterdam he and his wife Lijsbet had eight children (three of which died in infancy).[11] In Leiden they had four more. From all indications his children loved him deeply, as shown in a letter written after his death by his nine surviving children. “Of all things which we could ardently desire, what was there wanting? For this, all the praise is due to God alone. If we needed tuition, he incessantly favored us with his instructions, he imbued our minds with the fear of God and all piety, and he formed our manners. If we departed from our duty, he recalled us into the right path; and if we wanted comfort, he administered it to us in every form.”[12]
He encountered some doctrinal controversy while in Amsterdam, but the church officials cleared him of all charges after investigating the matter. His final years in Amsterdam were passed in relative peace. He concluded his pastorate in 1603 when he was appointed as a professor of theology at the University of Leiden.
Professor in Controversy
In 1602, after fifteen years of pastoral ministry, Arminius was appointed professor ordinarius at the University of Leiden. The occasion for this appointment was the death of two of the three eminent professors at Leiden, which pressed the university into a desperate need. They appealed to the officials in Amsterdam to allow Arminius to come fill one of these positions (he was well known as an intellectual and theologian); they reluctantly agreed. In 1603, Arminius moved to Leiden to teach. “In connection with his appointment, Arminius was appointed to doctor, defending in the process theses on ‘The Nature of God.’ They were immediately published.”[13]
He fell into almost immediate conflict with Franciscus Gomarus, a rigid high Calvinist and a fellow professor at Leiden. Gomarus sharply disagreed with Arminius’ views on predestination and supralapsarianism, opposing him publicly. After Arminius’ death, Gomarus presided over the Synod of Dort (Dordrecht), which officially rejected Arminius’ teachings as heresy and established the iconic TULIP[14] framework so familiar to the Calvinists. “No matter what Arminius wrote or said in his defense, he found himself constantly attacked by rumors and under a cloud of suspicion.”[15] The ongoing conflicts overshadowed his time at Leiden; it cannot be said that these were happy years. The constant weight of the conflict took its toll on Arminius body. Though the pressure wasn’t the cause of this death, they accelerated the effects of the disease that eventually took his life. He died an early death in 1609 at age 49, leaving his wife and nine orphaned children eighteen years old and under.
While Arminius found himself at the center of controversy for most of his later years, he did not seek it out and took no pleasure in the conflict. He was essentially an amiable man who hated the prevailing zeal for an impossible orthodoxy that “constrained the church to institute a search after crimes which have not betrayed an existence, yea, and to drag into open contentions those who are mediating no evil.”[16] “Almost all of his writings are composed in the heat of controversy; he was often under attack by critics and leaders of the Dutch state and church, who demanded that he explain himself.”[17] Though he often plied the truth with ruthless precision, his aim was most often the edification of his opponent. He took no delight in winning the fight, but only in explicating the truth.
Arminius was a man committed to Scripture above all else. His arguments consistently stem from Scripture, resting upon it, and indeed, within it. He refused to overstep what he believed was clear in Scripture. In fact, one primary thing that distinguished him from the Remonstrants (his followers) is his utmost commitment to Scripture alone as the authority of faith and practice. The Remonstrants developed Arminius’ beliefs beyond what he would have dared, moving into scholastic speculation on issues Arminius intentionally left untouched because he believed the Bible provided no definitive answer.
The same could be said of Calvin and his followers only a generation earlier. Calvin stuck close to Scripture; his followers fell back into the easier path of tradition and philosophy, forgoing the diligent bibliocentric approach of their mentor. Though it may seem odd, Arminius saw himself as aligned with Calvin in many things, if not with Calvin’s followers. His aim was not to separate from Dutch Reformed theology but rather to correct some of the weaknesses and inconsistencies he noticed within it. For good or for ill, Arminius had no qualms about identifying himself with the Dutch Reformed church in the Netherlands.
But more than identifying with a movement, Arminius saw himself primarily as the student—indeed the willing slave—of Scripture. One of his critiques of hyper-Calvinistic supralapsarianism was that those in it spent endless hours speculating about those things God had chosen to conceal. Likewise, he urged his students to spend their energy, not on “knotty theorems and difficult problems,”[18] but on the study of the sacred Scriptures. He applied himself to correcting this wrong at the University of Leiden, and largely succeeded.
He brought them back to the fountains of salvation—to those pure fountains whose pellucid streams refuse to flow in muddy channels. His object in this was that the search for religion might be commenced in the Scriptures—not that religion which is contained in altercation and naked speculations, and is only calculated to feed their understandings—but that religion which breathes forth charity, which follows after the truth that is according to godliness, by which young men learn “to flee youthful lusts” and by which, after they have completely overcome the allurements of the flesh, they are taught to avoid “the pollutions that are in the world,” and to do and suffer those things which distinguish a Christian from a heathen.[19]
Arminius lived his life as a servant, from all accounts a humble man, though his intellect and academic achievements could have been cause for pride. He rested his accomplishments in God’s provision, taking no glory for his own. Even in his early years “there is no indication of any arrogance or ambition on his part. Even his critics never accused him of abusing his pastoral position or of any other personal or spiritual faults.”[20] Those who knew him loved him. Upon his death Peter Bertius gave this final eulogy: “There lived a man, whom it was not possible, for those who knew him, sufficiently to esteem; those who entertained no esteem for him, are such as never knew him well enough to appreciate his merits.”[21]
[1] Olson, Roger. The Story of Christian Theology. InterVarsity Press, 1999. 460.
[2] Arminius, James, and Carl Bangs. The Works of James Arminius: Volume One. Baker Books, 1999. ix.
[3] Ibid. ix (footnote).
[4] Ibid. xi.
[5] Ibid. xi.
[6] Ibid. 28.
[7] Ibid. xi.
[8] Ibid. xii.
[9] Olson. The Story of Christian Theology. 461.
[10] Works: Volume One. 28.
[11] Ibid. xiv.
[12] Ibid. 11.
[13] Ibid. xv.
[14] TULIP = Total Depravity, Unconditional Election, Limited Atonement, Irresistible Grace, Perseverance of the Saints
[15] Olson. The Story of Christian Theology. 462.
[16] Walsh, Michael. Dictionary of Christian Biography. The Liturgical Press, 2001. 92.
[17] Olson, Roger. Arminian Theology: Myths and Legends. InterVarsity Press, 2006. 21.
[18] Works: Volume One. 37.
[19] Ibid. 37.
[20] Olson. The Story of Christian Theology. 461.
[21] Works: Volume One. 47.