Digging into the History of the Synod of Dort

What exactly was the dispute that led up to the Synod of Dort, and the history that followed it?

The H. Henry Meeter Center at Calvin College in Grand Rapids, Mich., has posted a new website offering a look at the rich historical background of this synod, or gathering of church leaders, that met over several months from 1618-19 in the city of Dordrecht in the Netherlands.

In our current age of instant communication and ever-changing fads and ideas, the Synod of Dort may sound like a dry, dusty meeting over arcane beliefs. It was held so many years ago, before cell phones, freeways, sprawling cities, and pick-and-choose buffets of what to believe.

But knowing a little history — especially about the Reformed faith — is never bad. If you’re interested, delve into the website and see how this 17th-century meeting helped to shape the Christian Reformed Church in North America — and other Reformed churches across the world — today.

Here are a few questions and answers from this wide-ranging and colorfully detailed website.

Ready?

Question: What important doctrine caused the dispute that led up to the synod?

Answer: Within the Reformed family of faith, theologians disagreed over the doctrine of election: Did God will to save all people, or only some from eternal damnation? Did people have free will in their decision to turn toward or away from salvation? Did God’s foreknowledge of how people would respond to the gift of salvation in Jesus Christ affect God’s decision to number them among the elect or the reprobate (sinners not among the elect)?

Question: Who was on what side?

Answer: In the Dutch Reformed church, this controversy crystallized in a contentious debate between two professors at the University of Leiden, Jacobus Arminius and Franciscus Gomarus. Arminius (and his supporters after his death in 1609) taught that the idea of God electing and reprobating everyone even before Adam and Eve’s fall into sin was unbiblical and left no room for God’s grace to act in human lives.

Question: How did they make their argument in challenging this key Reformed doctrine?

Answer: Arminius’s supporters issued a Remonstrance in 1610, listing their five points of disagreement with their opponents. Gomarus for his part held to a strict view of predestination and election. He and his supporters became known as the Counter-Remonstrants.

Question: What were the five points of disagreement?

Answer: These points boiled down to free will or human ability, conditional election, universal redemption or general atonement, resistance to the Holy Spirit, and falling from grace.

Question: Describe the traditional argument favoring election.

Answer: This was spelled out in-depth in the Canons of Dort, which rejected the Arminians’ five points and set forth the Reformed teaching on these matters with the purpose of offering a deeper assurance of salvation to believers in line with the teaching of Scripture.

Question: Be more explicit.

Answer: Here is what the Canons say: “Since all people have sinned in Adam and have come under the sentence of the curse and eternal death, God would have done no one an injustice if it had been his will to leave the entire ­human race in sin and under the curse, and to condemn them on account of their sin. . . . In order that people may be brought to faith, God mercifully sends messengers of this very joyful message to the people and at the time he wills.”

Question: Was the Synod of Dort entirely about predestination?

Answer: No. The theological controversy overlapped with a political power struggle in the Netherlands in the first decades of the seventeenth century. Two factions, one led by Prince Maurice of Nassau, the military commander who fought for independence from Spain, and the other led by the senior Dutch politician Johan van Oldenbarnevelt, vied for control of the Dutch government. Maurice of Nassau increasingly allied himself with the traditionalist Calvinist theologians (the Counter-Remonstrants), whereas Oldenbarnevelt found his support among the more liberal wing (the Remonstrants).

Question: Anything else?

Answer: The two groups also crucially divided over the appropriateness of state oversight and intervention in church affairs. Remember that the Reformed faith was the official faith of the Netherlands at the time, and hence the Reformed church functioned as a state church. However, the Counter-Remonstrants largely rejected what they saw as the state’s encroachment on the church, whereas the Remonstrants appealed to the state to exercise its authority over the church (and curb the pressure of their opponents).

Question: How did this all lead to the Synod of Dort?

Answer: The theological debates and political pressures converged in 1618, leading the Dutch States-General (the Netherlands’ governing body) to call a national synod to resolve many of these issues. In order to give the meeting more legitimacy and impact, the States-General decided to invite Reformed delegates from other countries to join the gathering. On Nov. 13, 1618, the Synod of Dort began its meetings. The final session took place on May 9, 1619.

And so on. There is much more.

By searching the website, you’ll see thumbnail sketches of key players in this doctrinal and historical drama; read the timeline of people and events leading up to the Synod; and be able to dig deeper into the Canons of Dort themselves to see how they have helped to shape the Reformed church as we know it today.

And this site can also help give you background if you plan to attend the upcoming Synod of Dort Conference running Sept. 14-15 at Calvin Theological Seminary in Grand Rapids.

Commemorating the 400th of the Synod of Dort, the conference is open to pastors, faculty/staff, undergraduate students, graduate students, and general community members.  It will include visuals, music, panel discussions by scholars and others, and a special exhibit of the Statenbijbel, the official Dutch Bible commissioned by the synod and first published in 1637.

Cosponsored  by the H. Henry Meeter Center for Calvin Studies, Calvin Theological Seminary, Western Theological Seminary, the Christian Reformed Church in North America, and the Calvin College Seminars in Christian Scholarship, the conference will address how the work of the Synod of Dort encompassed a broad range of issues, including catechisms, Bible translation, theological training, and more.

Click here for a list of speakers. Additional participants will be Paul Fields, curator of the Meeter Center at Calvin College, and three panelists for the final session: Karin Maag, director of the Meeter Center; Kathy Smith, associate director and program manager for grants programs in the Calvin Institute of Christian Worship; and Matthew van Maastricht, pastor of the Altamont Reformed Church (RCA) in Altamont, N.Y.

Click here to register for the conference.