One of the issues with the narrative that TULIP accurately summarizes what happened at the Synod of Dort is the first letter, T. The Reformed asserted “total depravity” because the Remonstrants didn’t, right? The original Remonstrance of 1610 said in its third article:

That man does not have saving faith of himself nor by the power of his own free will, since he in the state of apostasy and sin can not of and through himself think, will or do any good which is truly good (such as is especially saving faith); but that it is necessary that he be regenerated by God, in Christ, through his Holy Spirit, and renewed in understanding, affections or will, and all powers, in order that he may rightly understand, meditate upon, will, and perform that which is truly good, according to the word of Christ, John 15:5: “Without me ye can do nothing.”

Every human is in a state of unbelief and sin and therefore cannot think, will, or do any saving good including faith. This is why we must be born again. What’s wrong with this? Nothing. The Heidelberg theologian, David Paraeus, said it “needs not much examination: if wee follow the natural sense of the words” that are “consentaneous [in agreement with] Holy Writ.”2 Maybe the Reformed taught the big T version of total depravity and the Remonstrants taught the little t version? Something’s off in popular conceptions of Dort. You may have noticed that the Canons of Dort have a third and  fourth point of doctrine. The reason is the third Remonstrant article wasn’t the issue, nor was the first part of article 4:

That this grace of God [mentioned in article 3] is the commencement, progression, and completion of all good, also in so far that regenerate man cannot, apart from this prevenient or assisting, awakening, consequent and cooperating grace, think, will or do the good or resist any temptations to evil; so that all good works or activities which can be conceived must be ascribed to the grace of God in Christ.3

Some of the synod delegates even noticed this as the articles of the Remonstrance  sounded more orthodox than the doctrine the Remonstrants defended in their writings.4

   

The Issue

What was the issue? “There is poyson in the taile,” to use the image of Paraeus;5 meaning, it’s the second part of article 4: “But with respect to the mode of this grace, it is not irresistible, since it is written concerning many that they have resisted the Holy Spirit. Acts 7 and elsewhere in many places.”6 It was King James who said the Remonstrant articles “were perhaps not greatly to be misliked: but . . . they were expressed with cunning and art to make a specious shew . . . the articles served but for a bait to swallow doctrine, which was of more danger than the articles would pretend.”7 A part of that cunning was the phrase “irresistible grace.” Paraeus called it “horrid and barbarous” and that “our orthodox men . . . acknowledge not this barbarous and ambiguous terme.”8 In fact, there is a sense in which we affirm grace is resistible as well as irresistible. In the words of Richard Muller, it’s in the fourth Remonstrant article that “this insistence on prevenient grace is drawn into relation with the synergism of the first two articles.”9 When article 3 mentions faith, it denies that it arises from the power of human free will; but this has to be interpreted in light of article 4 and its insistence on “prevenient grace”—the grace that “comes before” a human’s response to God. The Reformed would agree that God’s grace “comes before,” but the issue is that the Remonstrants taught that its mode or way of working was to be a resistible grace. In other words, God’s grace comes before the overall work of conversion and specifically regeneration, but it’s effective only when the free will of the sinner cooperates with it; if a person rejects it, it does not work.10

Historical Background

Augustine versus Pelagius One of the great debates in the Western church was between Augustine and Pelagius in terms of the grace of God in predestination. It also related to human nature, sin, and God’s grace. J. N. D. Kelly summarized the patristic teaching through the fourth century as “revealing the firm hold which . . . Christians had on the truth of man’s fallen condition and consequent need of divine help . . . [but also] side by side with it, of a dogged belief in free will and responsibility.”11 If Augustine was the representative of the former, Pelagius was the poster child of the latter.12

Pelagius was a popular teacher in Rome from 380 onward but had to flee to North Africa in 409 in view of Alaric’s invasion. In North Africa, Pelagius was shocked by the pessimistic view of human nature in Augustine’s backyard. Emblematic was Augustine’s line in his Confessions:  “Give what you command, and command what you will.”13 Augustine recorded Pelagius’s response: “Pelagius . . . could not bear [these words]; and contradicting somewhat too excitedly, nearly came to a quarrel with him who had mentioned them.”14 In contrast, “the keystone of [Pelagius’s] whole system is the idea of unconditional free will and responsibility.”15 This meant that even after the Fall, Pelagius “rejects the idea that man’s will has any intrinsic bias in favour of wrongdoing.”16 This also meant “he equally resists the suggestion that there can be any special pressure on man’s will to choose the good.”17 Grace was necessary in Pelagius’s system, but he radically redefined it especially as the gift of free will itself with its possibility of not sinning.18 For Augustine, original sin means we participate in and are held responsible for Adam’s sin. Kelly summarized the situation like this: “Others before Augustine had stressed our solidarity with Adam, but none had depicted so vividly our complicity with him in his evil willing.”19 This means that while God’s image in fallen man is not completely lost, it is horribly marred. We no longer have the freedom not to sin and enjoy the good, but our will is enslaved to our sinful nature. In the words of Kelly, “In the strict sense of free choice . . . man is always free, that is, he can choose freely the course he will pursue; but since his will acts on motives and certain motives may press irresistibly on it, the range of choices which are ‘live options’ for him is limited by the sort of man he is.”20

Council of Carthage

Some of these issues were dealt with at the Council of Carthage in 418. Eight canons or theological rules were decided upon, anathematizing Pelagian views. For example: 1) Adam was created mortal therefore would’ve died whether or not he sinned, 2) infants shouldn’t be baptized or that baptism forgives sins although infants do not have original sin, 3) God’s grace helps us only in not sinning by opening to our understanding his commands and doesn’t enable us to do his commands, 4) we can without grace fulfill the divine commands.21 What Carthage expressed was a thoroughly Augustinian view of sin and the necessity and power of grace in the lives of sinners.

Council of Orange

A century later at the Council of Orange in 529, this debate came to its ancient culmination. Knowing what this council said gives us important background to the debate within the Reformed community at the time of the Synod of Dort. Orange’s doctrinal position is a lengthy list of twenty-five canons and then a conclusion22 from the writings of Gennadius of Marseilles and Prosper of Aquitaine, both quoting and summarizing Augustine. They rejected Pelagianism by identifying the necessity of grace in several canons. Adam’s sin has affected man’s body and soul; therefore, “the liberty of the soul [did not] remain[ . . . ] uninjured” (canon 1). Adam’s sin has affected all humanity in passing “bodily death, which is the punishment of sin, and . . . sin also, which is the death of the soul” (canon 2). Adam’s very condition of being a creature in the state of integrity was such that his human nature could not preserve itself without the help of its Creator; therefore, if humans could not keep salvation without God’s help in that state, how does man have the power to be able to restore what he has lost without the grace of God (canon 19)? The Council of Orange also rejected Pelagianism by identifying the operation of grace prior  to regeneration. Grace isn’t conferred as a result of human prayer; prayer proceeds from grace (canon 3). God doesn’t await our desire to be cleansed from sin; this desire “is put into us by the infusion and operation of the Holy Spirit” (canon 4). “The beginning of faith” is not implanted in us by nature; instead, the gift of grace “correct[s] our will from infidelity to faith, from impiety to piety” (canon 5). God doesn’t give us mercy because we, apart from his grace, believe, will, desire, strive, labor, watch, study, seek, ask, and knock for it; instead, all this proceeds from “the infusion and inspiration of the Holy Spirit” (canon 6). We cannot rightly think of or choose any good that relates to salvation or assent to the preaching of the gospel through our natural powers; instead, these proceed from “the illumination and inspiration of the Holy Spirit” (canon 7). In sum, “God loves us for what we shall be by His gift, not for what we are by our own merit” (canon 12). In reading the Canons of Dort, third and fourth point of doctrine, Orange’s doctrine of the effective working of the Holy Spirit to change us is found throughout.

Common Christian Convictions on Sin

Turning again to the third and fourth point of doctrine you should notice its strange enumeration. The reason is that they were responding to the five points of the Remonstrants. Their original third point was not disagreeable on its own. It was when it was combined with the fourth point that it became objectionable. This means the outline of the third and fourth points is unique in the canons. The title of this point of doctrine says it’s about humanity’s corruption (de hominis corruption) but also about how humans are converted to God (conversione ad Deum ejusque modo). “Conversion” is being used as a general concept of being changed from a sinner outside fellowship with God to being a child of God in relationship with him. The articles go on to speak of “regeneration” as a particular aspect in that conversion or change.

Articles 1–2 open with the common Christian convictions about sin and then define sin and the necessity of regeneration as the initial aspect leading to conversion in article 3. Articles 4–5 return to common Christian convictions about the overall process of conversion before defining it in article 6. Articles 7–17 go on to speak of conversion in general and regeneration in particular.23 In other words, these articles move from the general (conversion) to the particular (regeneration) work of God’s grace in the lives of sinners.

1. As cited in “The Remonstrance of 1610,” appendix C in De Jong, Crisis in the Reformed Churches, 208.

2. Paraeus, “Epitome of Arminianisme,” 832.

3. As cited in “The Remonstrance of 1610,” appendix C in De Jong, Crisis in the Reformed Churches, 208–9.

4. Goudriaan, “The Synod of Dordt on Arminian Anthropology,” 85.

5. Paraeus, “Epitome of Arminianisme,” 832.

6. As cited in “The Remonstrance of 1610,” appendix C in De Jong, Crisis in the Reformed Churches, 208–9.

7. Milton, The British Delegation and the Synod of Dort, 21 n. 59.

8. Paraeus, “Epitome of Arminianisme,” 832, 833.

9. Muller, “Arminius and Arminianism,” 34–35. On the issues of theological anthropology at Dort, see Goudriaan, “The Synod of Dordt on Arminian Anthropology,” 81–106.

10. On prevenient grace, see Muller, “gratia praeveniens,” in Dictionary of Latin and Greek Theological Terms, 144.

11. J. N. D. Kelly, Early Christian Doctrines (1960; rev. ed., New York: Harper SanFrancisco, 1978), 357.

12. For a summary of what follows, see Hubertus R. Drobner, The Fathers of the Church: A Comprehensive Introduction, trans. Siegrief S. Schatzmann (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 2007), 404–9.

13. Augustine, Confessions: Books 9–13, ed. and trans. Carolyn J.-B. Hammond, Loeb Classical Library 27 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2016), 10.29.40.

14. Augustine, “On the Gift of Perseverance,” chap. 53, Nicene and Post Nicene Fathers: First Series, 5:547.

15. Kelly, Early Christian Doctrines, 357.

16. Kelly, Early Christian Doctrines, 358.

17. Kelly, Early Christian Doctrines, 359.

18. Kelly, Early Christian Doctrines, 359.

19. Kelly, Early Christian Doctrines, 364.

20. Kelly, Early Christian Doctrines, 367.

21. For the text, see Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers: Second Series, ed. Philip Schaff and Henry Wace (1900; repr., Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 2004), 14:496–99.

22. On the specific sources of these canons in Augustine, Gennadius, and Prosper, see Hefele, A History of the Councils: Volume 4, 155–63; Woods, Canons of the Second Council of Orange, 14–49. See Woods for the Latin text with an at times antiquated English rendering.

23. This outline is contra Feenstra, who divides this point of doctrine into the total corruption of man (arts. 1–5), the miracle of conversion (arts. 6–12), and the manner of conversion (arts. 13–17). See Unspeakable Comfort, 97.

Rev. Daniel R. Hyde is the pastor of Oceanside United Reformed Church in Carlsbad/Oceanside, CA. He is the author of Grace Worth Fighting For: Recapturing the Vision of God’s Grace in the Canons of Dort (Davenant Institute).