⭐⭐ The source of TULIP. ⚠ But first know two things: the acronym was coined later, and on two of the five points the two sides were much closer than the usual account says.
The issue
How should the Reformed church answer the five articles of the Remonstrance?
Claim
For the five articles of the Remonstrant side, see the entry on The Remonstrance.
Counterclaim
⚠ The Remonstrants' position at the synod: in 1618 Prince Maurice ordered the leading Arminians arrested and jailed to await the synod's verdict; the president of the synod was Johannes Bogerman, whom Olson describes as a very extreme Calvinist preacher who had written a book in favor of putting heretics to death. González records that by 1618 Maurice of Nassau and his allies had consolidated their power, so that when the Synod of Dort met it was plain that it would condemn the Remonstrants' position.
⭐ The main points of the Remonstrants' five articles (the full text is in the entry on The Remonstrance; only the main points are given here, so that readers who look at this page alone can still see both sides):
I · Predestination. ⚠ It does not deny predestination; on the contrary, it affirms it — it only holds that predestination is the result of God's foreknowing who will believe, not of God's own initiative.
II · The extent of the atonement. Christ “died for all men and for every man”, but “no one actually enjoys this forgiveness of sins except the believer”.
III · Corruption. ⚠ Often described as the Remonstrants denied total depravity — that is not accurate. The text says that man, “in the state of apostasy and sin, can of and by himself neither think, will, nor do any thing that is truly good”.
IV · Grace. “As respects the mode of the operation of this grace, it is not irresistible.” ⭐ This article is the real watershed.
V · Perseverance. ⚠ They did not say this doctrine was wrong, nor even attack it — they only refused to teach the opposite without further evidence from Scripture.
The ruling
⭐ The five answers (from the original text, which González translates in his third volume):
I · Election. Wholly unconditional: “The good pleasure of God is the sole cause of this gracious election; which doth not consist herein that God, foreseeing all possible qualities of human actions, elected certain of these as a condition of salvation, but that he was pleased out of the common mass of sinners to adopt some certain persons as a peculiar people to himself”.
II · The extent of the atonement. Christ's death “is of infinite worth and value, abundantly sufficient to expiate the sins of the whole world”, but “it was the will of God, that Christ by the blood of the cross … should effectually redeem … all those, and those only, who were from eternity chosen to salvation”.
III · Corruption. ⚠ Read this alongside the third article of the Remonstrance — it is Dort that leaves some room here: “There remain, however, in man since the fall, the glimmerings of natural light, whereby he retains some knowledge of God, of natural things, and of the difference between good and evil”.
IV · Grace. Faith is God's gift “not on account of its being offered by God to man, to be accepted or rejected at his pleasure, but because it is in reality conferred, breathed, and infused into him; nor even because God bestows the power or ability to believe, and then expects that man should, by the exercise of his own free will, consent to the terms of salvation … but because he who works in man both to will and to do … produces both the will to believe and the act of believing also”.
V · Perseverance. “The carnal mind is unable to comprehend this doctrine of the perseverance of the saints … Satan abhors it; the world ridicules it; the ignorant and hypocrite abuse, and heretics oppose it. But the spouse of Christ hath always most tenderly loved and constantly defended it, as an inestimable treasure”.
What was at stake for salvation
⭐ The two sides were still fighting over two faces of one thing: Dort wanted to guard salvation is wholly from God, and man has no say in it; the Remonstrants wanted to guard the human response is real, and God's love is for everyone. González gives a very cool-headed close: by 16th-century standards, he says, Arminius and the Remonstrants would have been regarded by Catholics and Lutherans as Calvinists; yet in less than a century the doctrine of predestination — a doctrine Luther had championed at least as eagerly as Calvin — became the test of orthodox Calvinism.
Aftermath
⚠ The cost must be recorded: Olson records that at least 200 Remonstrant leaders were removed from their posts in church and state, and about 80 were exiled or imprisoned. The statesman and philosopher Hugo Grotius was thrown into a dungeon and narrowly escaped; another statesman was publicly beheaded. The charge laid on them was that they secretly supported the Jesuits and Roman Catholic theology and sympathized with Spain — ⭐ and Olson records that there is no evidence at all that any of them had the slightest connection with the political crimes they were charged with. ⚠ But the battle line did not run one way only: the controversy at one point rose so high, Olson notes, that it threatened to set off civil war between the Dutch provinces, with each province backing one side and the two sides facing each other like sworn enemies — this was not one side persecuting the other, but a nation torn apart where religion and politics were knotted together.
⭐ The ending is worth noting: after Prince Maurice died in 1625, Arminianism, Olson writes, was slowly received back into Dutch life; by 1634 many exiles had returned home and formed the Remonstrant Brotherhood, which later became the Remonstrant Reformed Church, still alive today.
⚠ Two more points. First, the synod, Olson records, made no decision choosing between supralapsarianism and infralapsarianism, and the two views have lived side by side within Calvinism ever since. Second, the acronym TULIP itself was coined later — Olson states plainly that the five points never appeared in exactly this form before the Synod of Dort reached its conclusion on the controversy.