Arminius started to doubt the Augustinian doctrines of God’s sovereignty and grace and the Reformation’s teachings on sola gratia and sola fide.Īrminius was repeatedly called to explain his actions in front of civil and church authorities, but he always defended his orthodoxy and was dismissed with a warning. It was not just a matter of sinful nature. Arminius’s interpretation could only lead to self-righteous perfectionism or despair.Īrminius continued to preach on the Epistle to the Romans and Plancius continued to denounce other deviances from the Reformed confessional standards. It was a serious matter with a powerful impact on the Christian life. In other words, Paul was simply reflecting the common experience of Christians in this present age, when, as Martin Luther explained, they are both justified and sinful.Īccording to a contemporary writer, Arminius’s preaching on this chapter “procured him some ill will and but little favor with most of his ministerial brethren.” He was soon accused of Pelagianism (the belief that man has in himself the ability to obey God), and of contradicting the Belgic Confession and Heidelberg Catechism (i.e. Besides, there are other places in Paul’s writings where he expresses the same frustration with his sins. 22, 18), which are unique characteristics of believers. In reality, the confusion dissipates when one takes into consideration the rest of chapter seven, where Paul describes his “delight in the law of God” and “desire to do what is right” (vv. How can a regenerate person describe himself a “sold under sin”?
What happened? Was Paul talking about someone else? If he talked about himself, was it before or after he met Christ? Traditionally, Reformed exegetes gave a straightforward interpretation: Paul was talking about himself at the time he was writing the Letter to the Romans, as an Apostle appointed by Christ after his radical conversion on the way to Damascus.
22), calls himself “sold under sin” in chapter seven (v.
JACOB ARMINIUS BIOGRAPHY FREE
The same Apostle Paul who, in chapter six, says we have been “set free from sin” (v. On the surface, there was also a contradiction with the previous chapter. He had been preaching from the book of Romans, and he had just arrived at Romans 7, Paul’s account of his inner contradiction between a love of God’s law and a wearisome propensity to sin. Things progressed fairly well, even though Arminius began to progressively move away from some of the doctrines he had learned in Geneva. Eventually, Arminius passed the examination and was installed as pastor. Plancius, seven years his elder, was part of an examining committee of five ministers. It was there, in 1587, that he first met Arminius, a 27-year old who had studied under Beza and had come to pastor a church in Amsterdam. When the Spanish troops occupied Brussels in 1585, Plancius was forced to flee north to Amsterdam, where he served as minister for nearly forty years. They were dangerous times, and Plancius experienced a few narrow escapes from death. His activities became increasingly difficult as Roman Catholic Alessandro Farnese, Duke of Parma and Governor General of the Netherlands, placed heavy pressures on the Reformed churches. In 1576, Peter was ordained as a pastor and returned to his homeland, where he preached to a Reformed congregation. Peter’s studies focused on theology but included astronomy and cartography. His father, a fairly wealthy man and recent convert to Protestantism, sent him to Germany and England to achieve a good education. Plancius was born Pieter Platevoet (literally “Peter Flatfoot”) in 1552, in a town in West Flanders called Dranouter (now in the Flanders region of Belgium). Between sermons and meetings, he drew maps and organized daring expeditions in order to open merchant routes from Holland to the East. His battle for orthodoxy was long and assiduous but didn’t consume all of his time. Arminius’s teachings implied a different view of the Christian life and were dangerously regressing from the Reformation’s rediscovery of the Gospel.Įventually, Plancius became known as the main representative of the Reformed position against Arminius. It was not, as some historians think, a needless fastidiousness. Facing the opposition of a government that equated religious syncretism with peace, Peter Plancius persisted in pointing out the doctrinal errors of fellow pastor Jacob Arminius.
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