Arminius and His Declaration of Sentiments: An Annotated Translation with Introduction and Theological Commentary

1. Early Years

11 Early Years There lived in Holland a man whom they who did not know could not sufficiently esteem, whom they who did not esteem had never sufficiently known. These words, with which Carl Bangs chose to end a chapter in his magisterial biography of Arminius,1 come near the end of the “Funeral Oration” by Arminius’ lifelong friend, Petrus Bertius.2 As fitting as these words are to punctuate a man’s life and to end a chapter about his life, they may be at this point in time just as appropriate to renew a conversation about Arminius’ life, influence, and theology. It was a perilous world into which Arminius was born, as the entire Lowlands (lit: “Netherlands ”) were locked with Spain in a struggle for political and economic survival.3 Wars during this period, however, were not only about political control and economic leverage; religion was often at the center of contention. In the case of the Lowlands, a rising tide of Protestant sympathies struggled against an established Roman Catholicism. The gradual breakdown of the Habsburg Regime resulted from battles that were fought city by city over an extended period of time.4 Jonathan 1 Bangs, 331. This epitaph (in Latin) for Arminius in the Pieterskerk, Leiden, was added at the commemoration of his birth in 1960. 2 Petrus Bertius, “Bertius’ Funeral Oration on Arminius,” Works, 1:13–47. 3 Prior to the nineteenth century, the land area that largely comprises what we know today as The Netherlands (or Holland) was referred to as the Netherlands, Low Countries, the Lowlands, or (for governmental purposes) as the United Provinces. Since this book refers to that earlier period, the country will be called the Netherlands, Low Countries, or Lowlands when reference is made to the country prior to 1800. It should further be noted that in this period, Holland was the designation for what are now the provinces of North and South Holland—not to the entire country of The Netherlands as in modern times. 4 See Jonathan I. Israel, The Dutch Republic: Its Rise, Greatness and Fall, 1477–1806 (Oxford: Clarendon, 1995), esp. 129–54. Carl Bangs has pointed out that it is not as simple as the Catholics leaving and the Calvinists arriving: “The earliest Dutch 1 12 Arminius and His Declaration of Sentiments Israel has noted, “As the grip of the Habsburg government loosened during the early 1560s, and Protestant preaching and other activity could come out into the open. . . , it was predictable that Calvinism would play the dominant role.”5 This being the case, it does not mitigate the harsh reality of the scenes played out during the process of the lessening Habsburg grip on the Netherlands. The family of Arminius was victimized in the process.6 Tradition has it that Arminius was born October 10, 1560, but Bangs places the date of Arminius’ father’s death “no later than 1558” and concludes that Arminius was born in 1559.7 Apart from the tradition handed down regarding Arminius’ day of birth,8 we have no corroborating historical record, but we do know that he died in Leiden on October 19, 1609. We also know that his given name was Jacobus Harmenszoon, and that he was born to Harmen Jacobszoon and that his mother, traditionally identified as Engeltje (Angelica) Harmensdochter , was from the city of Dordrecht.9 From the Oudewater registry we know that his mother’s given name was actually Elborch— a given name that was seldom used after the rise of Protestantism. In the registry for 1558, Bangs found a listing for “Elborch Harmen Jacobszoon wede ,” or “Elborch the widow of Harmen Jacobszoon.”10 Reformers don’t seem to be Calvinists at all. They rise out of the soil . . . nurtured by the old Dutch biblical piety, not seized by dogmatic insights but steadily pressing toward a purified life according to the Scripture” (Bangs, 21). Bangs was not alone in holding this opinion. Contrary to perception, the move to Protestantism in the Netherlands was very gradual, with the majority of the population remaining sympathetic to Roman Catholicism during Arminius’ lifetime and beyond. Even by the time of the Synod of Dort in 1618–1619, barely one-third of the total population was estimated to be Protestant. Cf. Alastair Duke, “The Ambivalent Face of Calvinism in the Netherlands, 1561–1618,” in International Calvinism, 1541–1715, ed. Menna Prestwich (Oxford: Clarendon, 1985), 109. 5 Israel, Dutch Republic, 104. 6 Beyond Carl Bangs, the most reliable biographical sources on...