From his own lifetime until the present, caricatures of Jacobus Arminius have persisted in four categories: 1. In Christology, he has been tarred as an Arian. 2. In soteriology, he has been called a (Semi-)Pelagian. 3. In personal ethics, he has been labeled a liar. 4. In relation to the Reformed tradition, he has been viewed as a renegade. The prodigious scholarship of American Reformed historical theologian Richard A. Muller has done much to contextualize Arminius and to moderate—but not entirely dissipate—these four criticisms. For Muller, Arminius is not an Arian but a christological subordinationist; not a Pelagian but a thoroughgoing synergist; not a malicious liar but duplicitous; and not a rebel against the Reformed tradition but a would-be reformer whose innovations nonetheless placed him beyond the pale of its confessions. Muller also offers the important insight that due to the integration of doctrines within Reformed dogmatics in Arminius’s day, any change to one doctrine would affect related doctrines as well. In this paper, I engage with Muller’s Arminius scholarship by first assessing Muller’s four criticisms of Arminius and mounting counterarguments, then building on Muller’s insight on doctrinal integration to identify the common themes that integrate Muller’s and Arminius’s contrasting understandings of Christology, soteriology, ethics and epistemology, and the Reformed tradition. This exercise in theological pattern recognition and comparison yields two models of the integration of doctrine, ethics, and ecclesial identity for contemporary theologians to consider in relation to today’s religious landscape, not least the recent history and current state of Methodism.
Regarding Arminius’s alleged subordinationism, I review his affirmation of the Son’s full deity and the doctrine of divine simplicity as safeguards against any ontological subordinationism, then situate Arminius’s nuanced handling of the Son as autotheos within the broader stream of Reformed and Reformed-influenced reflection on this disputed christological title from Calvin through such interlocutors as Turretin, Maastricht, and Pearson (who significantly influenced early Methodism), to Barth, McCormack, and Allen and Swain.
Regarding Arminius’s supposedly thoroughgoing synergism, I draw particularly on Stanglin’s and McCall’s points that Arminius explicitly distances himself from Pelagianism; that the label of Semi-Pelagianism is an anachronistic polemical slur which in any case does not describe his view; that Arminius appeals to human free will primarily to account negatively for the resistibility of grace, not to account positively for the prevailing of grace in individuals’ salvation; and that both Arminius and uncontroversially Reformed theologians include both monergistic and synergistic moments in their ordines salutis. I also note the affirmation of libertarian free will by recent Reformed theologians Brunner and Macleod.
Regarding Arminius’s suspected dishonesty, I challenge Muller’s framing of the burden of proof and his presumption that only duplicity, not genuine misunderstanding, can account for the conflict between Arminius and his opponents. I note how the opposite presumption has proven fruitful in modern ecumenical dialogues, including those with Reformed representation. I also defend Arminius’s ethic of discretion as having dominical precedent.
Regarding Arminius’s excision from the Reformed tradition, I rehearse Pinson’s rebuttals to Muller’s arguments that Arminius was out of harmony with the Reformed confessions of his time. I further note the diversification of Reformed thought since the early post-Reformation era. Rather than setting the boundaries of the Reformed tradition by confessional subscription, as Muller does, I employ van den Brink’s criteria of Reformed identity to show that Arminius meets these standards for (re)inclusion within the ranks of the Reformed.
Turning from apologetics to constructive use of Muller’s insight on doctrinal integration, I trace the integrating themes of Muller’s and Arminius’s respective views on the four loci surveyed above. Muller’s vision is consistently homogenizing: the trinitarian persons all possess their deity identically and independently (all three are autotheos), apart from their distinct relations to one another; God acts monergistically in saving and damning alike; and both truth and tradition are determined by a chorus of voices all making the same claims. By contrast, Arminius’s perspective allows for a greater valuing of difference, otherness, and singularity: the divine persons possess their deity differently from, and only in relation to, one another; God permits significant human freedom to cooperate with or resist salvific grace and to experience the consequences of either choice; truth may be on the side of the one rather than the many; discretion may dictate different degrees of candor depending on one’s audience and circumstances; and differences of opinion may be tolerated within one’s theological and ecclesiastical tradition. Muller and Arminius thus represent two paradigms of integration worth considering in relation to today’s homogenizing and pluralizing dynamics, as exemplified in the recent history and current state of Methodism.
The prodigious scholarship of Richard Muller has moderated but not dissipated longstanding critiques of Jacobus Arminius’s Christology, soteriology, personal integrity, and identification as a Reformed theologian. Muller also has noted insightfully the integration of doctrines in post-Reformation dogmatics, such that altering one doctrine would affect others. This paper engages with Muller’s scholarship by first assessing Muller’s four criticisms of Arminius and mounting counterarguments, then building on Muller’s insight on doctrinal integration to identify the common themes that integrate Muller’s and Arminius’s contrasting understandings of Christology, soteriology, ethics and epistemology, and the Reformed tradition. This exercise in theological pattern recognition and comparison yields two models of the integration of doctrine, ethics, and ecclesial identity for contemporary theologians to consider in relation to today’s religious landscape, not least the recent history and current state of Methodism.