Jacob Arminius, like a mighty Samson, took down five pillars of Calvinistic soteriology, but not the main, central pillar: penal satisfaction. It was Faustus Socinus who performed that service. However, history has strange twists and turns that often leave us asking what “might have been.” This is one of those transitions. Had the thought of Arminius and Socinus on the subject of salvation (I don’t refer to the latter’s unitarian opinions) converged, say, within the first two decades of the 17th century, we might have beheld a radically different outcome than what actually ensued. I have written elsewhere on this matter, so will not repeat myself here except to say that all “five points of Calvinism” are implicit in the idea of penal satisfaction. Those who take in hand to lop off the famous TULIP without pulling up the bulb itself will find that it keeps growing back again and again.
Socinus died at 65 in 1604, whereas Arminius died at 49 in 1609. They did not address precisely the same issues of soteriology during their careers. Nor did they ever meet or correspond. Yet we can speculate that if they had, and a dialogue had developed, they might have put two and two together. They were coming at the topic of salvation from different ends. Arminius was plucking off the petals while Socinus was digging up the root of Calvin’s prize hybrid. If they had compared notes, they might have recognized what kind of GMO they were actually up against. Calvin had spliced Biblical ideas with Augustine’s resurgent gnostic ideas from his overreaction to Pelagius. Augustine’s pervasive punitive elements were in the very soil where Calvin’s tulip alone could thrive. A viable alternative to Calvin’s system would require an altered environment in order to flourish—ground with a more premial pH than Augustine’s penal ground. In fact, it necessitates reconstituting the balance that characterized the Biblical explanation itself.
Then along came Hugo Grotius, an ardent young friend of Arminius, who was only 26 at the latter’s death. A prodigy, who early mastered Latin, became a diplomat while still in his teens, pursued expertise in several fields, and excelled at jurisprudence, for which he is most famous, also wrote significant theological treatises and celebrated commentaries on Scripture. The latter were notable for applying the “rational” (i.e., allegedly eschewing dogmatic assumptions) grammatical principles developed by Joseph Scaliger, the most eminent Protestant scholar of his age. So when Grotius decided to devote serious attention to Socinus’s work on the Atonement, something truly noteworthy was sure to emerge.
However, despite the ostensive neutrality of his undertaking, Grotius undeniably had mixed motives. As an ardent Arminian, he was keen to assert the orthodoxy of the Remonstrant cause, which was coming under increasing attack by Calvinists. Scarcely a better means could be conceived than to make common cause with his opponents by joining them against some alleged heretic who was menacing from a safe distance. Poland would do nicely. Grotius had to make a hard choice. There might still be time to pour oil on the waters and make peace with his bellicose adversaries. (In 1604, at the age of 21, he had already written the work that was to make him most famous when finally published in a more mature version in 1625: De jure belli et pacis, The Law of War and Peace.) He made a diplomatic move.
Rather than entertaining any thought of finding common cause against the errors of Calvinism by engaging in a fresh and friendly examination of Socinus’s De Jesu Christo Servatore, which was an explicit refutation of Calvin’s penal satisfaction views, occasioned by the attacks of a Reformed pastor named Covetus—wouldn’t this be an obvious approach to take if theological candor were uppermost?—Grotius instead leveraged himself against Socinus on this single doctrine of Atonement (not, mind you, against his more vulnerable anti-trinitarian doctrines!). This would still look good on his résumé, but is not quite ingenuous. (Nor could a frank reading of Grotius’s Defense of the Catholic Faith concerning the Satisfaction of Christ [against Faustus Socinus] justify an assessment of dispassionate rationality in his handling of Scripture, in my opinion, as I hope to show later.)
Grotius’s treatise was published in 1617, eight years after the death of Arminius. Convergence was resisted from the outset. What Grotius actually did share with Socinus—opposition to Calvin’s doctrine of salvation (on Arminian premises)—was sabotaged by something Grotius still shared with Calvin: the assumption of penal dominance in divine justice. And as you might infer, Grotius’s overwhelming emphasis on punishment in his treatise is but a re-echo of Augustine’s hyper-penal language, indeed, entire worldview. Grotius’s view, not one whit less than Calvin’s and even Anselm’s, is an unintended (but by no means innocent) travesty of the surprising, even blessedly shocking premial view of the Apostles. How much of this might have been channeled through Arminius, I have not personally investigated yet. But it is certain that the ground Socinus was cultivating had a pH significantly altered from the exclusively penal. He had already departed from Augustinian premises and was plowing a fresh furrow, although the contents of his own treatise makes clear that he was still at the stage of breaking up the clods of Calvinistic doctrine rather than systematically elaborating the native apostolic doctrine of the New Testament. Therefore he never arrived at the fully premial explanation of the Atonement. But he had shifted ground decisively and should be given due credit.
However, Grotius’s well-meant attempt was, after all, futile in achieving his objective. Although published a year before the famous Synod of Dordtrecht convened (1618-1619), every plank in the Remonstrant five-fold platform of theological reforms was condemned outright, and the ousting and persecution of Remonstrant leaders commenced.
More significantly, however, Grotius himself eventually had second thoughts about what he had written. In later years, he penned marginal annotations in his own work that showed he was questioning his own earlier position and moving into sympathy with Socinus. (Keep in mind, both his own and Socinus’s volumes treated mainly the doctrine of the Atonement, so we must not imagine that Grotius was edging toward unitarianism by his concessions.)
~to be continued~
The Premial Atonement 