Background
Jacobus Arminius was born on the 10th of October, 1560, in Oudewater, South Holland. His father, Hermann Jakobs, a cutler, died while he was an infant, leaving a widow and three children.
Jacobus Arminius was born on the 10th of October, 1560, in Oudewater, South Holland. His father, Hermann Jakobs, a cutler, died while he was an infant, leaving a widow and three children.
Jacobus Arminius studied at the University of Leiden and under Calvin's disciple ThéodoreTheodore de BèzeBeze (Beza) at Geneva.
After brief stays at the University of Padua, in Rome, and in Geneva, Arminius went to Amsterdam. He was ordained there in 1588. In 1603 Arminius was called to a theological professorship at Leiden, which he held until his death. These last six years of his life were dominated by theological controversy, in particular by his disputes with Franciscus Gomarus, his colleague at Leiden.
A study of Paul's Epistle to the Romans convinced Arminius that Dutch Calvinist doctrine on salvation was unscriptural.
He became the leader of a theological party who became known as Arminians, and the last years of his life were devoted to controversy.
In 1610 the Arminians presented a Remonstrance to the ecclesiastical authorities, which is regarded as the classical formulation of the Arminian position. The Remonstrance opposed five doctrines taught by the Dutch Church: 1) that God predestined all to salvation or to damnation by an arbitrary act of will, 2) that the elect are necessarily saved and the reprobate necessarily lost, 3) that Christ died for the elect alone, 4) that God gives grace to the elect alone, and 5) that those who have received saving grace can never lose it.
In 1618-1619 the Dutch Reformed Church's Synod of Dort examined the Arminian doctrines, and officially condemned them. As a result, 200 Arminian clergy were deprived of their positions. Arminianism survived in the Netherlands as a small, separate sect. Arminianism strongly influenced theologians elsewhere, such as John Wesley in England, who were opposed to the Calvinistic teaching on predestination.
Jacobus Arminius taught in theology Guillaume Feuguieres or Feuguereius (d. 1613), a mild divine, who had written a treatise on persuasion in religion, urging that as to it " men could be led, not driven "; Lambert Danaeus, who deserves remembrance as the first to discuss Christian ethics scientifically, apart from dogmatics; Johannes Drusius, the Orientalist, one of the most enlightened and advanced scholars of his day, settled later at Franeker; Johann Kolmann the younger, best known by his saying that high Calvinism made God " both a tyrant and an executioner. "
Jacobus Arminius was a man of mild and liberal spirit, broadened by varied culture, constitutionally averse from narrow views and enforced uniformity. He was essentially an amiable man, who hated the 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 meditating no evil. "