Post-Reformation
Leiden, Netherlands
Supralapsarian Calvinism
Also: Franciscus Gomarus
⭐ This entry is the hardest in this group to write evenly. Olson's portrait of him is very harsh, and it is an Arminian historian's assessment of his own tradition's opponent — under the rules of this section those adjectives are kept out of the main text and kept only in the editor's note. Our judgment of him is one sentence only: where his charges were false, our source says so plainly and we record it; on his theological position our source gives too little material, and we will not speak for him.
Below: first his own position, then the church’s verdict — kept separate. A rejected opinion keeps equal weight here.
His own position
One of the leading supralapsarians, and, like Arminius, a professor of theology at the University of Leiden. He opposed not only the Arminian line; he also held, as Olson reports, that infralapsarianism was at least defective, if not heretical — that is, he left no room even for the milder wing within his own camp. ⚠ Our source does not give any full statement of his own, so for his position please also see the entry on Theodore Beza and the text of the Canons of Dort in the entry on the Synod of Dort.
The full position of his school (supralapsarianism) is listed in our source and we record it here, ⚠ but attributed to the school, not passed off as his own words: in the order of God's decrees, predestination to salvation and to damnation comes first, and creating the world, permitting the fall, providing Christ and applying salvation come after — that is, the first and most important purpose of God's relation to the world is to glorify himself by saving some and damning others. ⚠ Olson notes that supralapsarians could tolerate infralapsarians, but thought infralapsarianism a poor interpretation of Calvinist theology, and, worst of all, one that risked opening the door to synergism — ⭐ this explains why he would not spare even the milder wing of his own camp: to him it was a breach in the wall, not a sense of proportion.
The church’s verdict
⚠ Our source states plainly that two of his charges against Arminius were false: first, that Arminius was a secret sympathizer with the Jesuits; second, that he was a Socinian (denying the Trinity). Olson calls these outright lies, and records that, for the Remonstrants as a whole, there is no evidence at all that any of them had the slightest connection with the political crimes they were charged with. ⚠ But the other side must be recorded too: what Arminius rejected was not only supralapsarianism but, as Olson puts it, the whole predestinarian doctrine of classical Calvinism — and to Gomarus's party this really was a direct denial of the Dutch Reformed orthodoxy of the time; the controversy did not come out of nowhere.
Threads he belongs to
Grace and Free Will
Round 3 · The Arminian Controversy Claim A supralapsarian at the same university as Arminius. ⚠ Our source states plainly that his two charges against Arminius were false.