Triumphant Easter, day of first-fruits, in which Christ arose as Victor over sin, death and the grave. Glorious ascension, for he went through the heavens to Father’s throne, where he was crowned with glory and honor to rule over the works of God’s hands. Blessed Pentecost, feast of harvest, when he came to dwell with […]
“In the beginning of the seventeenth century, Arminianism rose as a necessary and wholesome reaction against scholastic Calvinism, but was defeated in the Synod of Dordt, 1619, which adopted the five knotty canons of unconditional predestination, limited atonement, total depravity, irresistible grace, and the perseverance of the saints. The Bible gives us a theology which […]
In his work on the Lutheran Reformation, Philip Schaff discusses the home-life of Martin Luther and writes: He began the day, after his private devotions, which were frequent and ardent, with reciting in his family the Ten Commandments, the Apostles’ Creed, the Lord’s Prayer, and a Psalm. In a letter to Melanchthon, Veit Dietrich wrote […]
The country in which we live is called a Christian country. About 65% of the population belongs to some church while the remainder of the population has, at one time or another, been connected with the Church. There are many denominations in the country, some very large, numbering better than 10,000,000 members. There are others […]
In the far northwest corner of the rolling and corn-covered hills of Iowa are two of our Protestant Reformed Churches which have been here almost as long as our churches have been in existence. While this distant outpost of our denomination is sometimes referred to as “the sticks”, here also people of God have long […]
We have called attention to some aspects of the history of the Christian Reformed Church in 1924, a history which resulted in the establishment of our own Protestant Reformed Churches. At the very end of that article we quoted both the decisions of the Synod of the Christian Reformed Church concerning the dogma of common […]
We are now ready to discuss the Synod of Dordrecht itself. You recall that, through the overthrow of the government of Oldenbarneveldt in the Netherlands by Prince Mauritz, a government sympathetic to the Reformed cause had come into power. This government convened the Synod that met in the city of Dordrecht and dealt with the […]
The basic question which needs answering (which we are discussing in these articles) is, “Who are the ones today which stand in the line of the Calvin Reformation?” This means, as far as our present discussion of the Arminian controversy is concerned, that we want to know whether the Arminians were, as they claimed, those […]
Who were those who stood in the line of Calvin? Could the Arminians prove their claim that they were the ones? Was it true that they were intent only on developing the Reformed faith, as they claimed? Or was it rather true, as the leaders of the Reformed Churches in the Netherlands maintained, that their […]
The history of the Church of Christ here on earth is the history of men. Foremost in the controversy that raged in the defense of the Reformed faith over-against the heresy of Arminianism appears the figure of Jacobus Arminius. He more than any other is associated with the error that was condemned by the national […]