Synod of Dort (1618-1619)

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What is the significance of the Synod of Dort in the history of Calvinistic theology?

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Tonight, we continue our study of soteriology, and I would like their handouts to be handed out if someone could come in and pass those out for me.
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We have tonight our part 10 of this study, and really this part 10 is, it could be its own part, it could be its own section, and I don't know how many weeks it's gonna take, but I'm gonna go ahead and tell you it's gonna take more than one.
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Because so far in our study of soteriology, we have looked at the subject of salvation, what are we saved from, how are we saved, what is grace, what is justification, how do we understand faith, repentance, regeneration, adoption, union, golden chain of redemption, apostasy, sanctification, eternal security, we've looked at all of these subjects, but tonight we're going to look at part 10, which I have entitled the five points of Calvinism.
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And if I were to do one 30 minute lesson on the five points of Calvinism, that would not be fair to me or to the subject.
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So as I was sitting and listening to brother Andy talk and talk about the purity and the anchor of God's word, I thought, you know, there's no reason to rush.
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So I'm just gonna, I'm gonna take it as it comes, I'm gonna go a little slower, but I will say this, this has been a study of systematic theology, but really when we step away, when we step into the five points of Calvinism, we're actually stepping into something that's actually referred to as dogmatics.
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You've heard the phrase dogma, you know it, you've heard that term dogma.
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Well, there's different ways to do theology, and there's biblical theology, which means you go book by book, verse by verse, and you draw from that, that's what we do on Sunday morning in exegesis, that's biblical theology, that's the first way, and that way is dependent, everything's dependent on that first.
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And then after that, you systematize it, and it becomes systematic theology.
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And so from biblical theology to systematic theology, and then what happens is those systems become more firmed up and they become schools of thought, or dogma, dogmatics.
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And so you have the Arminian school and you have the Calvinistic school, you have the Wesleyans and the Baptists, those are all referring to different schools of thought when it comes to overall theological principles.
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Well, as many of you know, and I make no bones about it, I am a Calvinist.
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And so as part of our study of salvation, I felt like it was necessary to talk about why that is.
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Why is it that I use the term Calvinism? Why am I not afraid to use it? I have a lot of friends who are Calvinistic in their belief, but they won't call themselves Calvinist because, oh, I don't like titles.
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Okay, that's fine, we don't have to agree.
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But one of the things that it helps me is it cuts down a lot of garbage.
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Because if we're gonna hem-haw about where we stand on the issues, then we're not gonna get anywhere very quickly.
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But when I say, hey, I'm Keith Foskey and I'm a Calvinist, you know where I stand.
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At least on five points of doctrine.
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You know, I have to wonder where I'm at.
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And so, you know, a few years ago, I just said, you know what, I'm just gonna drive right into it.
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I'm not gonna, it's just gonna be it.
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And I'm not afraid of it, and like I said, I know some people get offended by it, and I hope that by the end of this lesson you'll understand why I think it's important.
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How many of you have ever heard of the tulip? A few of you? Okay, most of us.
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Again, if you've been here for any length of time, you probably have heard of the tulip.
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This, of course, is the Calvinist's favorite flower.
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Calvinist's wives always get tulips and never get roses.
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Typically, the tulip is also referred to by another name.
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Does anybody know what the other name for the tulip is? The doctrines of grace.
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The doctrines of grace.
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If you ever hear anyone refer to the doctrines of grace, they are referring to the five points of Calvinism.
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That is a, it's just another way of saying it.
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And I think sometimes it's almost a sneaky way.
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Now, I'm not saying it's bad, I'm just saying I think some people don't wanna call themselves a Calvinist so they say, I believe in the doctrines of grace.
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Yeah, yes sir, very erudite, very good sounding, you know.
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Because if you say, I'm a five point Calvinist, that sounds, you know, a little more harsh.
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And what's interesting about this acrostic, and if you have the handout which you were just given, it has the acrostic in it and it explains each one of the letters and what it means.
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Total depravity, unconditional election, limited atonement, irresistible grace, perseverance of the saints.
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We're gonna go over those as the weeks come.
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But what I wanna talk about tonight is where that came from.
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Because one of the things that people need to enter, people need to understand is that John Calvin did not write the five points of Calvinism.
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In fact, John Calvin would not have understood the phrase, the five points of Calvinism.
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In fact, I would even go as far as to say, John Calvin would not have liked the fact that anybody calls themselves Calvinists.
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John Calvin demanded that he be buried in an unmarked grave so that no one would go and reverence his place of death and that no one would make an idol out of his grave site.
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John Calvin was not, as many people try to present him, an arrogant man.
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John Calvin was a gifted theologian and a brilliant man, but he wasn't the boogeyman that many people try to paint him out to be.
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And when it comes to the five points of Calvinism, it's important to understand that this is actually a relatively recent invention because this is based on five points of doctrine that was opposing the Calvinists and the response to those five heads of doctrine is what we call the doctrines of grace.
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So the five points of Calvinism right away is a response, not an assertion.
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It's a response to something that was stated.
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And I wanna give you the background of what happened and when that happened.
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Because the foundations of the tulip were established during something called the Synod of Dort.
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Now the actual name is the Synod of Dortchek, but it's usually shortened to the Synod of Dort.
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And I wanna begin by taking you through a brief history of the synod and look at how it's canons because when a synod would convene, they would produce a written list of what the synod had determined and those written lists would become known as the canons of that council or synod.
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And so the canons of the council became known as the canons of Dort.
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And by the way, if you are a person who likes to investigate things further, I would encourage you to read the canons of Dort.
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They're available readily online and you can read how deep and wide.
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See the thing that bothers me about the tulip and again, I'm a five point Calvinist, don't have any bones about it, but I don't like one thing about the tulip is it's too brief to really express the weightiness of what it's trying to say.
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And even the terms that are used, total depravity, unconditional action, limited atonement, irresistible grace, perseverance of the saints, even those terms are not the best of terms.
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R.C.
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Sproul, when he was talking about the five points of Calvinism, he said, even the first one, total depravity, he would prefer it be called radical fallenness.
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He said, but then you get rule up and it doesn't work.
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So, you know, there's a sense in which even the acrostic is by itself not the best.
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But if you read the canons of Dort, you will see that there is so much more than just five heads of doctrine.
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These five heads of doctrine are so much deeper and so much more vast than a lot of people realize.
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Let's look at the background of the Synod.
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The Synod of Dort was held from November 13th, 1618 to May 9th, 1619.
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So it was less than a year.
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It was in Dorcek, which is in Holland, and it arose because of a controversy regarding the doctrines of a man by the name of Jacobus Arminius.
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So we need to probably mention him.
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Oftentimes, as I said earlier, you'll hear people talk about the debates between Calvin and Arminius.
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Well, those didn't happen because Arminius was a lot younger.
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Calvin would have been a boy.
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Calvin would have been a boy when, or excuse me, Arminius would have been a boy when Calvin died.
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But Arminius, and by the way, you'll hear people talk about Arminians, and you'll also hear people talk about Armenians.
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Armenians are from Armenia.
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That's important because people say, well, the Armenians, no, the Armenians are a nation.
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That's a national identity.
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Arminian is those who are the followers of Jacobus Arminius, sometimes referred to as James Arminius, also known as James Hermanson.
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He had various names, but most commonly known as Jacobus Arminius.
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And though Arminius had been dead for some time, he had a group of students who followed his teachings and they took up his doctrines and promoted his doctrines in the church.
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Arminius had been the student of a man named Theodore Beza.
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That is an important name to remember because Beza was the student of Calvin.
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So Arminius is his student and he is Calvin's student.
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He was the successor to John Calvin in Geneva.
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And again, there was no debate between Arminius and Calvin because he was really a generation later.
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At the time of Calvin's birth, Arminius was a young boy.
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There was never any interaction between the two that we know of, at least none of any serious or important note.
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Yet Arminius did rebel against Calvin's teachings and against the teachings of his teacher, Theodore Beza.
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And Arminius had become influenced by Dierick Volkert...
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Oh, scoot, mm-hmm.
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Volkerts Zun Kornhurt, mm-hmm.
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That's, I'm only gonna do it once.
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Himself having been influenced by the humanist scholar, Desiderius Erasmus.
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How many of you have ever heard of Desiderius Erasmus? You should.
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Erasmus, very important historical figure.
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He debated Martin Luther on the bondage of the will.
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So this is all historically around the same time, right there in the 16th, 17th century.
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And so Erasmus had influenced this man, Dierick, who had influenced Arminius.
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And so Arminius took issue with Beza, who was a student of Calvin.
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And having given up his reformed teachings, the teachings of Calvin are often referred to as reformed theology.
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Having given up reformed theology, Arminius set out to develop and teach his own theology, garnered, or excuse me, and in doing so, he garnered his pretty specific following.
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Arminius died in 1609.
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So he's dead in 1609.
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Remember what we said earlier, the council convened in 1618.
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So the council was in 1618, so that's nine years after his death.
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But the council was convened to deal with the followers of Arminius, who were known as the Arminians.
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But at that time, they were not known as the Arminians.
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At that time, they were known as the Remonstrants.
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Now, that's a word that we don't use very much.
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The word remonstrant means protester.
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But there was already a group called the Protestants.
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So couldn't very well be the Protestants, so they called themselves the Remonstrants.
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But it meant the same thing.
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So while the Protestants had protested against Rome, the Remonstrants were protesting against the Protestants.
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So they were the protestors of the protestors.
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And they produced in 1610, which would have been, as you know, one year after the death of Arminius.
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In 1610, they produced five points of theology.
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So you have the five points of Arminianism.
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I'm gonna move this line.
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So you have the five points of Arminianism, which were the teachings of the Remonstrants.
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And they are as follows.
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Number one, the five points of Arminianism is number one, human ability, human ability.
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Another way of writing that would be free will.
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What was the thing that Erasmus argued with Luther about? The freedom of the will.
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Who did Erasmus influence? The one who influenced Arminius.
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So isn't it interesting that we see the fruit of the tree? See, Erasmus believed in free will.
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He taught his student.
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His student taught his student or his successor.
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And Arminius is basically a recipient of this line of teaching about the freedom of the will.
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And so the very first head of doctrine in the Arminian school of teaching was free will.
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And you notice something.
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You go to a lot of churches today and free will is like the third sacrament.
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They have the Lord's table, which is venerated.
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They have the baptismal font, which is venerated.
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And then, oh boy, you better not attack free will because that is the third and most important of all man's sacraments.
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If you say anything about free will, you're gonna have to fight a battle.
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By the way, if you come Saturday, and I'm not trying to give a commercial, but I'm gonna give a commercial.
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If you come Saturday, we're gonna blow free will right out of the water.
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But that was the first doctrine that separated the remonstrants from the Calvinists.
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The Calvinists were teaching that man is dead in sin and unable to do anything good toward God until God so gave him the ability.
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And the Arminians were, no, man has that ability.
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It is a natural or prevenient grace provides a natural ability for man to do good towards God.
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So that was the first point of doctrine and there are five.
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So I'll go a little bit more quickly.
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The second point was conditional election.
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Conditional election.
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What does conditional election mean? You're being chosen by God.
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That's what the word election means.
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You're being chosen by God is conditioned upon your behavior.
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It is conditioned upon your action.
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God looks down the corridor of time.
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He sees what Brian is going to do.
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And because he knows that Brian is going to be a believer, Brian's going to exercise his free will to believe.
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And God knows he's gonna exercise that free will to believe.
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And therefore he's going to choose him conditionally based on the condition that Brian does what he's supposed to do.
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And that's called conditional election.
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You can see already how the tulip is formed as a response to this.
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The third one, universal atonement.
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Universal atonement.
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The Arminians believed that the death of Christ made an atonement for all mankind, but they were not universalists.
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Even though they believed God's son had died as an atonement for all mankind, they said that atonement was not effective until a person exercised his faith.
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And that was the condition which he did based on his own free will.
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You see, it all builds on itself.
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So the universal atonement is made for all, but it's only applied to those who believe.
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And when it's applied by their own free will, whenever they choose to believe.
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Number four, resistible grace.
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Again, it's just the opposite of the five points that we know.
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Resistible grace is that God gives grace to all men, enough grace to be saved, a prevenient grace, if you will, that allows all men the ability to be saved, but all men have the capacity to resist God's grace.
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And so they can all choose whether or not to cooperate with grace or to reject it.
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And by the way, that word cooperate is very important in Arminianism, because the whole concept of salvation is a cooperative action.
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See, it comes down to the issue I've talked about before, monergism versus synergism.
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Monergism, mono meaning one, ergos meaning work, or one worker.
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And so salvation is either one worker, or it is a combination of two or more working together.
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That's what synergy is, or synergism.
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And so monergism means one worker, salvation, God.
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That's the Calvinistic view.
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Synergism means there's a cooperative effort between man and God.
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God does his part, you do your part.
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God gives you the grace and you do what you have to do, and they come together and synergistically produce salvation.
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And so that is the ability to resist that is necessary.
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And so all of these again fit together.
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And the last one, this one is a little bit more sticky, because the last one is what we would call falling from grace, falling from grace.
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And this is the idea that a person who gets saved and comes to faith and genuinely is born again, can later by some act of the free will, remember this is all based on the first one, human ability, because of an act of the free will, he can ungrace himself or fall from grace.
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He can disassociate himself from the grace of God and lose the grace of God.
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And so that is falling from grace.
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And the reason why I said this one is sticky, because as far as I know, and I've looked into this quite extensively over the years, as far as I know, Arminius never taught you could lose your salvation, but his students did.
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So to be fair to him as an individual, I don't know that he ever taught the fifth one, but it is the natural outworking of the rest.
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If your free will is what got you elected because God chose you based on what you were going to do and Christ did sort of a peanut butter salvation where he just sort of spread it everywhere, you know, that's the universal atonement thing.
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And you can resist God's grace if you want to, why can't you resist it even after you are saved? And so the natural byproduct is even after you're saved, you should have the free will to get unsaved.
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If you decide you don't wanna go to heaven or you decide you don't wanna be a person who's a believer.
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So what's interesting about this, if you go to a Methodist church today, this is basically what is taught, top to bottom, because the Methodists are Wesleyan and Wesley was a descendant theologically of Arminius.
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The Wesleyan Arminians, they're connected historically.
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And by the way, the Wesleyans were also the ancestors of the Pentecostals.
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So if you go to the Pentecostal church, you will find that these five heads of doctrine are still taught, maybe not in this way, maybe not in the language, but the teaching is there.
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They would all affirm free will.
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They would all affirm that God doesn't choose you until you choose him.
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They would all affirm that atonement is universal, it's for everyone.
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They would all affirm that you can resist the grace of God.
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And they would all affirm that you can fall from salvation, fall from grace.
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And so these are the five points of doctrine that were the teachings of the remonstrance.
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Remonstrance.
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So that is what gave birth, if you will, to the Synod of Dort.
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Yeah, they couldn't even come up, you would think they would have came up with a, I mean, hey, we got the tulip, right? We, yeah, this is what, it's like, achoo.
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Yeah.
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Maybe it has a special thing in German or French or Swiss or whatever, a different language.
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So we have human ability, conditional action, universal atonement, resistible grace, falling from grace.
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Those are the five heads of doctrine.
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And it was these five teachings which the Synod convened to deal with.
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And this was a time, and consider this, because this is not something we understand.
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Right now, theological differences mean as much to people as about as much difference as what car you drive.
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Or what side of town you live on.
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Theological differences really don't matter to many people anymore.
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They matter to me, and I hope they matter to you.
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But I tell you what, my wife and I were talking about this just this week, and how indistinct most people's faith is.
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If you ask them about what they believe, and to really begin to dig down into the particulars, most people can't even explain why they believe what they believe, or what they believe about things like this.
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I believe in free will.
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Why? Because I have to, because it gotta be free.
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Man can make choices.
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You know, that's often the argument, but not a very thoughtful one.
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So as a result of these doctrines, a synod was called.
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Why? Because at this time in history, theology mattered.
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And there was a snake in the grass, if you will.
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The doctrines of the Reformed Church were beginning to spread from Switzerland out into the rest of the world, and they were beginning to make headway, and God was doing this work of bringing revival.
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People were leaving Roman Catholicism, and they were going into the Reformed Church, and they were getting solid biblical teaching.
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And along comes the remonstrance, and guess what they're doing? And this is the thing that a lot of people don't realize, is this is the path back to Rome, because each one of these doctrines is affirmed by the Roman Catholic Church.
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This is the path back to Rome.
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And so the synod of Dort met, not just because there were some preachers out there who were preaching something a little different than what we preach, no, because they understood what was happening.
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Who was Erasmus? He was a Roman Catholic.
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So if Erasmus influenced this one, and this one influenced Arminius, it's a slippery slope, and I know they say a slippery slope's a bad argument, but I tell you what, a slippery slope's a slippery slope.
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And as that foot begins to slip, you know what the Bible says? Their foot shall slip in due time.
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That was the text that was used by Jonathan Edwards when he preached that amazing sermon called Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God.
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The text was simple.
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Their foot shall slip in due time.
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He preached the whole sermon on just that short phrase.
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Their foot shall slip in due time.
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And that was the danger, is this is a short trip across the Tiber and right back into Rome.
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And so the synod, an international synod, was called.
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The synod had members representing Reformed churches from continental Europe as well as the British Isles, and among these groups were also Anglican delegates from the Church of England and the Church of Scotland.
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14 members of the Remonstrants were also summoned to act as defendants of the cause.
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This was no small event.
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This wasn't two guys sitting over a pint talking theology.
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This was an international synod brought together for the purpose of dealing with a dangerous aberrant theology.
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And so the synod met, they heard the arguments, and they made their conclusion.
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And the synod officially condemned the Remonstrants as being opposed to Scripture and heretical.
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They condemned them as heretics.
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And they responded with their own canons of doctrine, their own standards.
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That's what the word canon means, a standard, which were meant to both teach truth and correct error.
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And these five canons would later be referred to as the doctrines of grace.
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Now, here's the thing to consider.
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Even though it was five canons, it didn't spell tulip then.
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The tulip doesn't come along until later.
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The five heads of doctrine are these, and don't worry about writing them, it's too long.
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The first head is divine election and reprobation.
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The second head is the death of Christ and the redemption of man thereby.
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Third and fourth head of doctrine is the corruption of man and his conversion to God and the manner thereof.
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And the fifth head is the perseverance of the saints.
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So again, if you want to dig into it, go home, get online, look up the canons of Dort.
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It's very, very long, but good, solid theology.
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One of the teachers at Westminster Seminary in California said this, he said, the five canons of the Synod of Dort are the crown jewel of Reformed theology.
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And R.
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Scott Clark, one of the Reformed teachers, he said this, he said, the canons of Dort represented a remarkable consensus of conviction among the Reformed churches on essential doctrines.
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Indeed, the very Reformation was at stake.
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If God's favor is conditioned upon anything in us, then we are lost because we are dead in sin.
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If the gospel is reconfigured to include our obedience, then it's no longer the gospel.
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If atonement is merely hypothetical, if the elect can fall away, then grace is no longer grace.
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So you see why it's important.
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And you see why the Reformers saw this as a dangerous road back to Rome.
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Now, time does not allow us to read all of the articles of the canons, and I would encourage you to do so as I have already.
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And I would also encourage you to notice this.
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When you read the canons, notice that it not only says what they affirm, but it says what they reject.
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That is a wonderful thing that many of the older confessions of faith would say.
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It would say we affirm this and we reject this so as to be very clear as to what they are saying.
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Now, over the years, that theology became distilled into an easily memorizable acrostic.
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And that leads us to the doctrines of grace which we started with.
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Most people who are introduced to Calvinism are introduced to this first.
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I think that's unfair.
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Because this is the end, not the beginning.
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This is the distillation of a vast array of theological insights in writing.
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To say that John Calvin focused on five points of doctrine is very unfair.
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And even to say that the Senate of Dort focused on five points, well, yes they did, but it was five very well-fleshed out points.
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But since this is how the majority of people understand the canons of Dort, it would do us good to understand it as well.
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And I'm gonna ask for just another minute or two as I close with this.
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And then next week, we're gonna begin to go down the tulip and we'll just maybe one week at a time.
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We might do two at a time.
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I don't know, let's just do it however long it takes.
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But I wanna say this about the tulip.
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As I said, it was not something invented by the Synod.
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It came into general use relatively recently.
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People were using the term five points of Calvinism as early as 1878, but that's about as early as we can find.
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So that, and that was R.L.
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Dabney's work when the five points of Calvinism, that term was introduced.
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However, Dabney's five headings were not the same as TULIP.
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They weren't tulip.
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Dabney's were total depravity, effectual calling, God's election, particular redemption, the perseverance of the saints.
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So that is Tegpah.
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So that didn't work either.
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The earliest place where we see the acronym TULIP was in 1905 by Reverend Cleland Boyd McCaffey in a lecture that he gave to the Presbyterian Union.
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So in that sense, this acronym in its current form is only about 115 years old.
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It was popularized by Lorraine Bettner in the book, The Reform Doctrine of Predestination, which was published in 1932.
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So that's less than a hundred years old.
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Other people have tried to give different names.
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As I said, R.C.
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Sproul likes to use the term radical corruption or radical depravity.
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James Boyce, Philip Rykin, others have used terms.
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And as we go through each one down through the week, I'll explain to you why other terms might be better.
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But ultimately I wanna end tonight by simply saying that when we talk about the idea of Calvinism, we are talking about this system that has a rich theological heritage.
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It's more than just five simple phrases.
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And I understand the reason why people take issue with these five phrases, because most people do not understand them.
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Most people have not, when they hear the term total depravity, most people don't even know what the word depravity means.
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It's bad.
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When they hear the word unconditional election, they don't understand.
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Limited atonement, does that mean Jesus didn't, you're limiting the power of Jesus's death? You know, there's all kinds of things.
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What do you mean irresistible grace? Didn't Stephen say we're always resisting the Holy Spirit? So there's all of these responses.
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And so what I'm gonna give you over the next few weeks is I'm gonna provide you with the meaning, I'm gonna provide you with why I believe it's the truth.
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So I hope you'll return for that.
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But as I close, I wanna read to you a quote from Charles Spurgeon.
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Now this quote can be misused and misapplied.
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I wanna read it to you simply because I agree with Spurgeon with what he's saying here.
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But you have to understand Spurgeon is, Spurgeon's a man who said and wrote a lot.
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And this particular phrase needs to be understood in the context of a much broader ministry.
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But listen to what he says about Calvinism.
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He says, I have my own opinion that there is no such thing as preaching Christ and Him crucified unless we preach what nowadays is called Calvinism.
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It is a nickname to call it Calvinism.
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Calvinism is the gospel and nothing else.
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I do not believe we can preach the gospel if we do not preach justification by faith without works, nor unless we preach the sovereignty of God and the dispensation of grace, nor unless we exalt the electing, unchangeable, eternal, immutable, conquering love of Jehovah, nor do I think we can preach the gospel unless we base it upon the special and particular redemption of His elect and chosen people which Christ wrought out upon the cross.
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Spurgeon was basically saying this.
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When we look at these five points, when we look at this doctrine, when we look at this theology, this isn't what Calvin invented.
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This is what Calvin taught because it's what's in the Bible.
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When we consider the reality that so many people can't even explain justification by faith, is it any wonder why people would reject a theology that requires so much thought and investigation? The next few weeks are gonna require thought and investigation.
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Saturday is going to require thought and investigation.
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You will be challenged by what is said in this church on Saturday, and you will continue to be challenged in the weeks to come.
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This is not tipping, dipping the toe in a mud puddle.
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This is wading in the waters of the word.
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So I pray that you'll come ready to study.
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Let's pray.
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Father, I thank you for your word.
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May it be that in the weeks to come, and especially on Saturday, Lord, we come hungry and thirsty for what the word has to teach us.
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In Jesus' name, amen.