The Arminian Confession of 1621: Translation
Overview
In 1621, two years after their hopes for free and open debate were dashed at the Synod of Dort, the peers and students of Jacobus Arminius published the Confession or Declaration of the Pastors, which in the Belgian Federation were known as the Remonstrants. The first and perhaps most important of Arminian confessions, this document was composed by Simon Episcopius and then approved at a gathering of Remonstrant pastors. It provided not only a defense of the Arminian “five points” condemned at Dort, but also succinctly declares the entire range of their theology. This fresh, unabridged translation of the 1621 Confession—the first since 1676—together with the original Latin, allows the contemporary reader to study the original language of the original Remonstrant leaders without the intervening interpretations of either their opponents or later admirers.
Top Highlights
“Geneva would need to resort to fabricating or extrapolating their differences with the Remonstrants. The Remonstrant rejections of unconditional election, limited atonement, irresistible grace and perseverance, together with the unique doctrines they affirmed in the Confession (such as multiple definitions of election) are per se reasons enough to declare that they represented an alien theological development.” (Page vi)
“The Remonstrant protest, however, was short-lived. The president of the synod expelled them for refusing to cooperate,35 and the synod decided to judge them from their writings.36 It condemned their beliefs on April 24, 1619, civil sentences were pronounced on May 6 and on July 5 the leaders of the Remonstrants were loaded into wagons and driven into exile.” (Page ix)
“Remonstrants wrote that ‘(we) could neither shake off the miserable yoke of sin, nor do anything truly good in all religion, nor finally ever escape eternal death, or any true punishment of sin. Much less could we at any time obtain eternal salvation without it or through ourselves’” (Page vi)
“the Remonstrants considered their movement as a rejection of Reformed scholasticism as a theological method.13” (Page vii)
“ Remonstrants affirmed grace is a ‘special work’ which only functioned in those who believe” (Page vi)
- Title: The Arminian Confession of 1621: Translation
- Author: Mark A. Ellis
- Series: The Arminian Confession of 1621
- Publisher: Pickwick Publications
- Print Publication Date: 2005
- Logos Release Date: 2015
- Language: English
- Resources: 1
- Format: Digital › Logos Research Edition
- Subjects: Arminianism › Early works to 1800; Arminius, Jacobus, 1560-1609; Arminianism
- ISBNs: 9781597523370, 1597523372
- Resource ID: LLS:RMNNCNFSSN1621TRA
- Resource Type: text.monograph.confessional-document
- Metadata Last Updated: 2022-09-30T02:45:01Z