Arminius: Theologian of God's Twofold Love (Part Two)

The following article, "Jacobus Arminius: Theologian of God's Twofold Love," written by William den Boer, is taken from the book Arminius, Arminianism, and Europe: Jacobus Arminius (1559/60-1609), published by Brill. You will want to purchase the book in order to read the entirety of this article, as well as the other essays contained therein, which were presented at the Arminius, Arminianism, and Europe: An International Conference, held October 2009, in honor of the 400-year legacy of Arminius's theology since his death in 1609. This post is part two of two parts: den Boer writes the following.

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A proper understanding of God's love needs to take into account its close relationship to God's will. God's will, logically subordinate to his intellect, is directed towards a known good. God's love is equivalent to God's will directed to a good. . . . For Arminius's view of God's twofold love, I will limit myself to the extensive exposition Arminius gives of it in the [Declaration of Sentiments]. . . .

The context of this exposition is Arminius's explanation in the form of twenty arguments as to why he rejects a "supralapsarian" -- to use an anachronistic term -- doctrine of predestination, where creation and fall are means to the execution of God's absolute decree. . . .

God's twofold love -- "without which there neither is nor can be any Religion" -- is the foundation of religion "considered in general." With that, Arminius indicates that he first wants to consider the meaning of God's twofold love for religion in the pre-fall situation, irrespective of Christ. It consists of two things: 1. a love for justice, which also produces a hatred for sin; 2. a love for "the creature who is endowed with reason, and (in the matter now before us), it is a love for man."

Arminius here refers to Hebrews 11:6: "Anyone who comes to God must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who earnestly seek him." God therefore displays his love for justice in that he does not will to give eternal life except to those who seek him. His love for humankind is that he wills to give them eternal life, should they [by grace] seek God. . . .

God's love for humanity is thus revealed in his gift of Christ to them, so that they may share in salvation through obedience consisting of faith and repentance. The gracious character of the Evangelical theology also comes out in the way God demands the obedience of faith and repentance: not in the first covenant, according to the strict demands of perfect obedience to God's right, but in the way of grace, that is, in Christ.

Arminius is moreover convinced that a supralapsarian view of predestination conflicts with the foundation of the Christian religion in two ways. First, in the first case of election, when it reverses the order of God's love and subordinates God's love for justice to his love for humanity. Second, in the case of reprobation, not only is the order there reversed, but God is even made to act injustly. . . . As Arminius sees it, both carelessness and despair undermine religion in a most dangerous way. Both are further greatly promoted by a supralapsarian view of predestination. For not only do God's twofold loves not function properly if at all, but their internal relationship is also overturned. . . .

In Arminius's theology, concepts such as God's will and decrees, predestination, gospel and covenant are at times virtually synonymous, and all agree with the more dense concept of the Duplex amor Dei [twofold love of God] in spite of the perspective and connotation each contribute. Arminius calls his view of predestination the foundation of the Christian religion, or salvation and of assurance. It is the "sum and the matter of the gospel; nay, it is the gospel itself." . . . 

This indeed characterizes his entire approach. It is from that perspective that Arminius decides to divide predestination, or the gospel, into four separate decrees with a particular order. . . . God's primary love for justice results in a fundamental place for Christ with respect to God's grace in the gospel. Without a preceding covenant . . . between God the Father and God the Son in which it was decided that the latter would as Mediator substitutionarily satisfy God's justice, no gracious communication and no foedus [treaty, covenant] between God and humankind is possible. Christ's death of satisfaction forms the foundation for covenant, gospel and predestination.

The distinctive elements of Arminius's four-decree predestination structure are: 

1. The fundamental and prominent place of Christ the Mediator and his atonement. 
2. The establishment of the conditions of the new covenant, that justification and thus the unio Dei [union with God] as final goal can be reached only through the means of faith in Christ, with the consequence that those who continue to reject Christ in unbelief will be excluded from the covenant. . . . 
3. The giving and "administration" of sufficient and necessary means of grace. The means are administered according to God's wisdom "by which God knows what is proper and becoming both to his mercy and his severity," and agree with God's justice "by which He is prepared to adopt whatever his wisdom may prescribe and to put it in execution." . . . 
4. The element of God's certain foreknowledge and middle knowledge, through which Arminius wants to maintain certainty and God's omniscience on the one hand, and the freedom of the human will on the other. . . .

Arminius appears to stand in the tradition of those who in the sixteenth century protested against the results of a causally deterministic system where the zeal for God's sovereignty, the sola gratia and the assurance of faith resulted, as they saw it, in God's authorship of sin. 

He distinguishes himself by his own approach, and joins himself with certain theological developments in his time. As his orthodox contemporaries, he shows great interest in the mutual relationship of Christology and predestination, but consistently with his own emphasis on the absolute primacy of God's justice as foundation of theology. 

In his departure from Calvin's argument on the inability to comprehend and know God, and in his criticism of the validity of certain scholastic arguments used by his contemporaries, Arminius shows himself to be a theologian of his time. Within the carefully determined limits which he prepared for the free will, dependent on God's grace, a necessary consequence becomes visible of various elements that naturally aroused heated reactions from "Calvin/Beza" -theologians. 

This reaction mirrors the great opposition experienced earlier by theologians who had held views similar to those of Arminius. However, it is not the free will but God's justice that forms the leading motive of Arminius's theology. Insight into Arminius's view of God's justice in his theology, as well as the place and function of the concept of justice in his theology, is absolutely imperative for a clear understanding of his theology and of his motives in their original context.

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William den Boer, "Jacobus Arminius: Theologian of God's Twofold Love," in Arminius, Arminianism, and Europe: Jacobus Arminius (1559/60-1609), eds. Th. Marius van Leeuwen, Keith D. Stanglin and Marijke Tolsma (Leiden: Brill Publishing, 2009), 40-50.