“Arminius Avant La Lettre”: Peter Baro, Jacob Arminius, and the Bond Of Predestinarian Polemic

By Keith D. Stanglin

[Keith Stanglin is a Ph.D. student in Historical Theology at Calvin Seminary in Grand Rapids, Mich.]

I. State of the Question

In the last third of the sixteenth century, the Reformed doctrine of predestination became the object of much debate because of its controversial nature. A significant figure in the dispute over the doctrine of predestination during this period was Peter Baro (1534–1599) of Cambridge, who stumbled into controversy with his doctrine of conditional predestination. The Cambridge controversy of the 1590s was paradigmatic of the debate between so-called Calvinists and anti-Calvinists in lands dominated by the Reformed church, and foreshadowed the more well-known controversy which revolved around Jacob Arminius (1559–1609) a decade later in the Low Countries.

In light of the significance of the debate that centered on the teaching of Peter Baro, the almost complete scholarly neglect of Baro’s life and theology is remarkable. Not so much as a dissertation or scholarly essay has been completely devoted to Baro, and that is not due to a lack of importance or of primary material. Baro has received momentary attention in monographs and essays of varying quality, but none of them seriously engages his thought.[1] Some studies horribly misconstrue his historical setting and significance, or simply display ignorance of this important figure. For example, Howard Slaatte writes that “even while Arminius still lived, Peter Baro began advocating Arminian doctrine at Cambridge University as early as 1595.”[2] The truth is that Baro, who was 25 years Arminius’s senior, never heard of Arminius, as far as we know. Furthermore, whatever doctrine Baro taught was not “Arminian” per se, and he certainly taught it long before 1595.[3]

James Nichols has done a great service by including his translation of Baro’s thoughts on predestination with his translation of Arminius, thus allowing the English-reading world to recognize the affinity between Baro and Arminius. Many have followed H. C. Porter in expressing this bond by describing Baro as an Arminius “avant la lettre”;[4] however, no one has bothered to actually investigate what this relationship involves.[5] After offering some necessary historical background based largely on primary documents, I intend to examine this bond by focusing on Baro’s Summa Trium de Praedestinatione sententiarum (hereafter, Summa),[6] with occasional reference to Arminius’s more famous Declaratio Sententiae (or, Verklaring; hereafter, Declaratio),[7] noting not only the striking similarities but also the differences in these independent documents. This is not an attempt to analyze exhaustively Baro’s doctrine of predestination. Rather, I shall limit my examination to his typology of predestinarian options, which will highlight the similarities and differences and raise some interesting issues. This article will show that a great deal of variety and lack of codification existed in this period of early Protestant orthodoxy (ca. 1565-ca. 1640) with respect to the fundamental Reformed doctrine of predestination and the so-called lapsarian question. The controversies involving Baro and Arminius pointed out the need for greater clarification, and helped shape the Reformed orthodoxy of the seventeenth century. My intention is to underscore the importance of Baro’s place in this watershed debate. Given this article’s focus on Baro and limitation of space, along with the accessibility of Arminius’s works and biographical information, a cursory knowledge of Arminius is assumed.[8]

II. Historical Contextualization

Pierre Baron, or Peter Baro,[9] whose doctrine of conditional predestination eventually came under fire at Cambridge, was born at Etampes, thirty miles south of Paris. After fleeing the French persecution of Protestants in 1572, Baro went to England and was elected Lady Margaret Professor of Divinity at Cambridge in 1574, a post he would hold for twenty-two years. During his time at Cambridge, he wrote many works, some of which are still available.[10] Baro’s first twenty years at Cambridge were mostly peaceful, with the exception of a dispute with Laurence Chaderton in 1581 on the nature of justifying faith.[11] He was a popular teacher at Cambridge, winning the respect of students and professors alike.[12]

As Porter documents, Baro’s theological position was clearly well known to the other Cambridge divines from the 1570s on.[13] In the 1590s, however, there was a growing distaste for Baro’s teachings against unconditional predestination.[14] The tensions erupted when William Barrett, a fellow of Gonville and Caius College and a student of Baro’s, preached a concio ad clerum at St. Mary’s church for the degree of Bachelor in Divinity on 29 April 1595, the Latin text of which has not survived. Nevertheless, the text of Barrett’s subsequent retractation does survive, from which the controversial points of the sermon can be gleaned.[15] Barrett’s sermon had denounced the teaching that one could be “secure” (securus) concerning salvation.[16] Barrett admits to proclaiming that “Sin is the true, proper, and first cause of Reprobation.” He had railed against such respected men as John Calvin, as well as Peter Martyr, Theodore Beza, Jerome Zanchius, and Francis Junius, “calling them by the odious names of Calvinists and other slanderous words, branding them with the harshest mark of reproach.”[17] The Heads of the colleges met at Cambridge six days later on 5 May and gave Barrett a statement of recantation drawn up by Robert Some, which they forced Barrett to deliver publicly at St. Mary’s on 10 May, but many were not appeased by the insincerity of his statement, which was said to lack “remorse and humility.”[18] The Heads and Barrett then wrote separate letters to the Archbishop of Canterbury, John Whitgift; the Heads complained about the disingenuous retractation, and Barrett complained about being denied his degree.[19] Barrett was also irritated by a copy of his propositions being distributed by some from St. John’s College, which he claimed misrepresented his sermon.[20] Whitgift did disapprove of the treatment Barrett received from the Heads and he disagreed with some of the things that Barrett was made to say in his retractation, siding with Barrett, for example, in his original use of certus, rather than securus. Furthermore, he said that the Cambridge theologian Robert Some’s sermon against Barrett and against Whitgift himself was “intemperate and indiscreet.”[21]

As a result of this controversy, the Lambeth Articles were written as a rule for teaching at Cambridge.[22] First composed by William Whitaker, the Regius Professor of Divinity at Cambridge, the Lambeth Articles are nine theses on predestination, perseverance, and certainty of salvation. The Articles were revised under the supervision of Archbishop John Whitgift in order to strike a balance between the strict Calvinism of the Heads and the perceived popery of Barrett; this revision was approved on 20 November 1595.[23] But as early as 30 September 1595, Archbishop Whitgift ordered that the points discussed in the Articles should not be made the subject of any more debates, lest the peace of the university be further disrupted. Yet, in defiance of Whitgift’s orders, on 9 October, two months before his own death, Whitaker preached his final sermon on all the points of the Articles, his Cygnea Cantio.[24]

Baro, who had been relatively silent during the dispute of 1595, preached his own sermon on predestination on 12 January 1596, asserting that reprobation is due to a person’s rejection of grace, in response to the interpretation of the points in Whitaker’s swan song.[25] Ten days later, 22 January, Baro came before the Heads and denied the accusation that he had spoken against the Lambeth Articles, the revised version of which does leave room for certain accounts of conditional predestination.[26] Whitgift dropped the case, but Baro was henceforth considered an enemy by some Reformed theologians at Cambridge. He was not re-elected to his post in 1596; he retired and later died in 1599.[27]

The controversy that culminated in Baro’s departure consisted of a series of actions and reactions between two opposing theologies, resulting then in further polarizations. Let us sum up these intense months of controversy. It is clear that Barrett’s sermon in 1595, which on one level was the starting point, was itself really the result of tensions that had been building throughout the 1580s and 1590s; Barrett’s sermon was an answer especially to the previous polemic of Whitaker.[28] Barrett, who would be denied his degree, accused another Cambridge theologian, Some, of a smear campaign.[29] Archbishop Whitgift reprimanded Some, and was frustrated by the Heads who were ignoring his authority.[30] Although Whitgift had demanded silence on the topic of predestination, Whitaker had preached on the points anyway. Rather than allow the Calvinist position towin by default, Baro preached his sermon in response to Some’s attacks, to the ill feelings of other divines (for Baro’s position was no secret), and to William Perkins’s sermon the previous week which attacked John Overall, a Baro sympathizer and soon to be Whitaker’s successor as Regius Professor of Divinity.[31] Moreover, the reference in Perkins’s Golden Chaine to the “new Pelagians” may have been an indirect assault on Baro.[32] This brief review of events demonstrates that the debate regarding the difficult doctrine of predestination was further complicated by the personalities and politics involved. The doctrinal clarification sought by the framers of the Lambeth Articles on the one hand and by Baro on the other hand did not silence their respective opponents, but instead brought louder opposition.

Baro, finding too little sympathy for his views among his Cambridge colleagues, directed his pen toward a more approving thinker. It was 1 April 1596, less than a year after Barrett’s sermon, that Baro wrote his letter to the Danish Lutheran theologian, Nicholas Hemmingius (Niels Hemmingsen). In the letter Baro complained that he had always been permitted to teach his opinions on grace, but now he could scarcely teach, much less publish them.[33] Thus, he attached a treatise that he hoped Hemmingius would publish, his Summa Trium de Praedestinatione sententiarum. This short treatise, not published until 1613 (and that by his posthumous enemies), seems to have been written before March 1595, before the controversies at Cambridge bubbled over.[34] Though it was given to a sympathizer, Baro directed it to a wider audience. In it, Baro summarizes three doctrines of predestination and mentions supporters of each; he rejects the first two doctrines and declares his third alternative to be the correct one. The document’s structure and polemical purpose in many ways resemble the most famous document of Arminianism, Arminius’s Declaratio Sententiae.[35]

III. Predestinarian Types

A. Structure of the Polemical Genre

The structures of Baro’s Summa and Arminius’s more detailed Declaratio on predestination are almost identical. Each writer begins by stating his method, namely, to delineate the various accounts of the doctrine of predestination as they are being taught among reformers. This structure is, to be sure, not unique to Baro and Arminius. To begin a treatise on predestination by distinguishing several accounts of the doctrine and concluding with the preferred option is a common characteristic of this polemical genre. In his preface, Perkins begins the Golden Chaine by distinguishing four types of predestination options, the fourth being his own.[36] In Whitaker’s final sermon, a polemical homily on the forbidden points of the Lambeth Articles, Whitaker also distinguished three options of predestination, the third being his own.[37]

It is noteworthy that Baro and Arminius, despite their citations of Roman Catholics, do not attempt to give strictly Roman Catholic accounts, although the Roman Catholics could have distinguished the same doctrines among their own doctors. Rather, Baro, explicitly omitting the condemned “opinions of Pelagius,” says that the three opinions he discusses (of course, including his own) exist “in the Reformed Church.”[38] There can be no doubt about this fact. Arminius retains the same field of investigation when he says the doctrines he discusses are taught in the University of Leiden and in “our churches,” that is, in Reformed churches.[39]

Aside from the similarities in this polemical structure, the most obvious structural difference between Baro and Arminius is the number of predestinarian options each finds available. Baro has a total of three, and Arminius has a total of four, each placing his own doctrine of conditional predestination in the final position. Why did they distinguish the available types differently, and what were their criteria? Whom did they cite for support? An investigation of their respective typologies of predestination will reveal both the unity and diversity latent within early Reformed orthodoxy, particularly with regard to the problem of predestination.

B. First Type

Baro and Arminius both begin their discussions of predestination with what they considered to be the most extreme and unbiblical of the available options, and these both most closely resemble the doctrine that is later called supralapsarianism, that is, that the divine decree to elect and reprobate for God’s glory came logically prior to the decree of the fall (thus, supra lapsum, above the fall). Therefore, when God predestines humanity, he considers humanity as pure and not yet fallen, but capable of falling.[40]

Baro says this first option is the opinion of Calvin and Beza,[41] and, “as these men wish, of Martin Luther and the later Augustine.”[42] He describes the first opinion thus: “God decreed from eternity to create humanity for this proper end, that he might elect certain people, suppose Peter, John, James, etc., and to reprobate all the remainder, to illustrate and display his mercy in the former, his justice in the latter, and his glory in both.”[43] He goes on to speak of two decrees according to this view: In the first “decree of election and reprobation, he had no regard whatever either to Christ the Mediator or to faith in relation to the former, and no regard to any kind of sin either original or actual in relation to the latter.. .. He decreed in the second place, though this was also from eternity, that the first person should fall.. . .”[44] The decree of the fall clearly is subsequent to the decree of election and reprobation of “certain people” (certos homines). Baro’s objection to this doctrine is that, although God destroys the reprobate on account of their sins, those very sins “had been committed through his own inevitable decree.” Those who teach this first opinion have made God the author of sin. Baro explains that according to the first option, “It is scarcely (and not even scarcely,) possible to understand how God may not be accounted the author of evil as well as of good.”[45] Elsewhere, in a letter to Whitgift dated 13 December 1595, Baro reiterates the same point: “.. . these are the chief [points], that God is not the author of sin, nor would that it should be committed; when he openly forbids it, and reproves men for nothing but because of sin, which he hateth.”[46] Since this first option implies such a nightmarish, unorthodox conclusion, Baro quickly dismisses it.

Arminius describes those who hold the first opinion as ascending “to the greatest height on this point,”[47] and he explains this doctrine in nine propositions. Arminius’s first option is explicitly supralapsarian, that is, holding predestination logically prior to the fall. He lists twenty reasons why he rejects this first option.[48] Like Baro, Arminius claims that, if sin must be accounted to a responsible agent, humanity cannot be held guilty for a wrong that it necessarily committed.[49] By accusing absolute predestination of making God the author of evil, Baro and Arminius stand in a long line of polemicists.[50]

C. Other Types

After discussing the first opinion and before arriving at his preferred doctrine, Baro presents a second option espoused by those who disapprove of the first. He says that the later Augustine and Georg Sohnius of Heidelberg, a student of Melanchthon, held this view, as well as Zanchius and Robert Bellarmine.[51] In this second opinion, predestination is “to be computed only from the fall of Adam.” Baro quotes Sohnius, who describes the human race here as “considered in the state and circumstances in which they would be after the creation and the fall.”[52] Baro says this differs from the first option because the mass of humanity is a “corrupt mass” (massa corrupta) rather than a “pure mass” (massa integra). So far, Baro’s second option sounds like a classic example of what was later called infralapsarianism (infra lapsum, after the fall), and this is what we have come to expect after the supralapsarian option.[53] But Baro records a second difference in the two options. As the first option assigns election and reprobation to the will of God alone, the second makes Christ the “material cause” of election, and sin the “material cause” of reprobation. Baro says this is nonsense, for if sin alone is the cause of reprobation, and all humanity equally shares in sin, then why does God desert some rather than others?[54] Hence, the second option falls prey to the critique of the first. Baro says God still seems to have determined prior to the creation decree to reprobate certain individuals and not others. “This opinion, though it seem desirous of having predestination to take its commencement only from the fall, comes back in substance to the earlier one which it desires to avoid. Thus far, then, these two opinions may be accounted as one.”[55] In other words, since God’s election and reprobation are still based in his will alone, predestination is decreed apart from faith and the fall. Hence, the second option cannot escape the accusation of making God the author of evil.

It is notable that, even as much as Baro’s second option resembles classic infralapsarianism, Baro himself did not consider the fall’s relation to the decree of election and reprobation, that is, the lapsarian question, to be the only criterion distinguishing predestinarian options; since causality also determined the issue, he was not thinking in strictly supra- and infralapsarian terms, as some later Reformed theologians did.[56] Baro even says that the second option, which begins infralapsarian, still has God acting logically “before the fall of humanity”[57] thus making it in a sense supralapsarian. The terms supralapsarian and infralapsarian appear around the time of the Synod of Dort, which should give the historian pause in applying these categories strictly to early Reformed orthodoxy. The historian who uses categories anachronistically can unwittingly succumb to the error of forcing earlier categories into the Procrustean bed of later thought. It is irrelevant whether the later categories are more or less clear than the earlier ones; anachronistic language tends to breed anachronistic thought. Thus, though it is legitimate to speak of the first option as supralapsarian because predestination is definitely prior to the fall, this term should not be used anachronistically either to force the other options into precise infralapsarianism, or, more importantly, to assume that the relation to the fall was the only distinguishing criterion of pre-Dort predestinarian options. An example of this mistake is J. V. Fesko’s declaration that “there are three main Reformed predestinarian variants” up through the time of Westminster: supralapsarianism, infralapsarianism, and Amyraldianism (hypothetical universalism).[58] The lapsarian question is the primary concern of Fesko, but not necessarily the primary concern of the sixteenth century. Not only has Fesko missed the nuances present in Reformed predestinarian options and the modes of distinguishing them before Dort, but he also forces theologians into categories where they do not clearly belong.[59]

Given the later lapsarian categories, we would suppose Arminius, who was about fifteen yearsand dozens of miles closer to Dort than Baro was, to be nearer to the familiar categories of supra- and infralapsarianism. On the contrary, where we might have expected one infralapsarian view between Arminius’s first and last types, we find two options, his second and third, each defying easy categorization.[60]

D. Final Type

After rejecting two doctrines of predestination taught by reformers, Baro submits his preferred option, which he says is supported by the fathers prior to Augustine, Augustine himself before the Pelagian controversy, Jerome, Melanchthon, Hemmingius, and Gellius Snecanus. Even Beza admits that this doctrine was taught by the fathers, though he still dismisses it.[61] Baro teaches that since God created humanity “for what is good, that is, for a life of blessedness,” he truly calls all people without limit “to repentance, faith and salvation,” for whoever believes will be saved, and whoever does not believe will be damned. Therefore, the elect, according to Baro, are those whom God “from eternity foreknew as believers in Christ.. .. But he hath likewise from all eternity reprobated all rebels, and such as contumaciously continue in sin, as persons unfit for his kingdom.”[62] This view, like the preceding ones, holds election and reprobation to be “eternal and certain” (aeterna et certa). It differs from the first option in that Christ is the cause of election, and sin the cause of reprobation.[63] Baro’s view holds two axioms as the greatest truths: “(1) God wills that all people be saved and that none perish; and (2) Christ has died for all.”[64] God only hates a person with reference to “his being a sinner.” Here Baro appeals to the distinction between the antecedent and consequent will of God. God wills the salvation of all, but he will not save those who persevere in resisting the Holy Spirit.[65] Baro’s doctrine of predestination is conditional on a person’s reception or rejection of God’s grace.

Arminius, like Baro, submits his own opinions on predestination after rejecting the first three options. Among the most important claims of Arminius’s opinion is his assertion that his doctrine affirms creation as an act of goodness from God, a real communication of good, and a perfect and proper work of God (“proprium Dei opus” as opposed to opus alienum).[66] This emphasis on creation theology comports with Baro’s statement above.[67] With Arminius’s system, prevenient grace is still necessary for salvation, which is by grace alone through faith alone;[68] the difference from the other options is that, according to Arminius, a person is able to resist God’s grace.

After surveying these options, it is again worth noting that the relation of the decree of predestination to the fall, or the lapsarian question, was not the only, or even primary, criterion in distinguishing predestinarian options. For although Arminius lays out four predestinarian options here, he elsewhere distinguishes five different lapsarian options.[69] Furthermore, when Perkins distinguishes four types of predestination, only the second type seems to make any reference at all to the fall.[70] When Whitaker distinguishes three types, the relation of the decree of predestination to the fall is a non-issue.[71] The only consistent distinction in this period was between conditional and unconditional predestination. The options available under unconditional predestination were not as neatly distinguished as they were after the Synod of Dort; thus, those later fine distinctions should not be imposed on the earlier discussions of this doctrine.

E. Friends and Foes

Not only is the common, independent attempt of Baro and Arminius to outline various views of predestination an interesting phenomenon, but their further attempt to identify these views with particular thinkers is also revealing. Especially because of the controversy surrounding Baro and Arminius, they have a stake both in avoiding misrepresentations of the opposition (though hyperbole is always available), and especially in gathering support for their own opinions.

Insofar as the predestinarian options as delineated by Baro and Arminius correspond with each other—and, as I have shown, there is not exact parallelism—a great deal of similarity exists between their assignments of particular theologians to particular doctrines. Baro places Calvin and Beza together as proponents of the first option.[72] Although Arminius in the Declaratio focuses on those who do not support the first option and those who implicitly agree with his own opinion, in the Amica cum Iunio Collatio he assigns the first option likewise to the teaching of both Calvin and Beza.[73] The fact that both men locate Beza, whose doctrine is supralapsarian, under the first option is not surprising. However, given the differences between Calvin and Beza on predestination, what is striking is the identification of Beza’s account of predestination with Calvin’s. Even on a superficial level, Calvin is notoriously difficult to categorize as supra- or infralapsarian, yet he is placed with Beza under the first option.[74] It is not that Baro and Arminius were unacquainted with Calvin’s theology; without question, Baro and Arminius would have both been familiar with Calvin’s Institutes.[75] Furthermore, it would be incorrect to assume that lumping the two Geneva professors together was a polemical move on the part of Baro or Arminius, for Junius himself, although he takes issue with Arminius’s analysis of what exactly they teach, never disagrees with Arminius’s connection of Calvin and Beza under the first option.[76] We cannot speculate about the ultimate basis for the association, but we can affirm that Calvin did not oppose Beza’s doctrine, and there was an apparently common and unchallenged assumption in some Dutch and English circles that Beza’s view of predestination was shared by Calvin.

The other large similarity is the vast number of witnesses on which Baro and Arminius call for support. Baro appeals to such a broad group as “the Fathers who preceded Augustine,” Augustine himself before the Pelagian controversy Jerome, Melanchthon, and Hemmingius, the Danish theologian to whom he sent the treatise.[77] Arminius does not list the actual supporters of his doctrine, but he lists these exact names as either those who agree with him in rejecting the first option, or those whose doctrine is consistent with what he believes.[78] Thus is demonstrated the common recognition of the chief figures on their side. The importance of classifying the adherents of each doctrine cannot be underestimated. For Baro, the controversy about predestination is as simple and grave as answering this question: Do you wish to follow the opinion of Beza or of the fathers? Baro goes so far as to call this point the “hinge” (cardo) on which the whole predestinarian controversy turns.[79] To teach the tradition, and not novelty is considered a sign of true orthodoxy.

Moreover, there are key figures that are not categorized in the same way by Baro and Arminius. The most obvious of these is Luther, whom Baro seems to represent as a supporter of the first doctrine and Arminius represents as rejecting the first doctrine.[80] Arminius says that Luther may have approved of this first doctrine at the beginning of the Reformation, but “afterwards deserted it,” indicating a shift away from it in his later life.[81] The reason for this difference of opinion is the way in which Baro phrases the statement; he indicates that Luther’s support of this first doctrine is how Calvin and Beza “want” (hi volunt) it to appear. Baro may not actually believe it to have been Luther’s opinion.

Augustine is another vitally important figure in the discussion of predestination. The Archbishop of York Matthew Hutton’s concluding comments on the Lambeth Articles offer a revealing insight into the common assumption of Augustine’s importance: “These theses are either openly collected, or can be deduced by necessary consequence, from the sacred letters, and from the writings of Augustine.”[82] It goes without saying that because of the tendency to dub any doctrine of conditional predestination as a revived form of Pelagianism, Baro and Arminius wanted to distance themselves from Pelagius and, as a result, stress their similarities with Augustine.[83] It is noteworthy that Baro, on a cursory reading, consigns Augustine as a proponent of all three options. As Nichols translates, Augustine is said to have held the first option as his “mature opinion,” the second “in the latter part of [his life],” and the third “before his contest with Pelagius.”[84] Rather than read this superficially as three views with two major shifts in Augustine’s doctrine of predestination,[85] it makes more sense, given that he is mentioned along with Luther, to interpret Baro’s assignment of Augustine to the first opinion as Luther’s should be interpreted—that is, Baro is saying that Calvin and Beza want it to appear this way. What he surely means is that Calvin and Beza (and every Reformed theologian) repeatedly appealed to Augustine for support, even though he could never be classified as a so-called supralapsarian. Thus, Baro says, Calvin and Beza act as if the first option is held by the “later” (posterior) Augustine. Then Baro, instead of ignoring Augustine as he does Luther, locates Augustine where he belongs, in the second and third options. The second option, according to Baro, is the opinion of the later Augustine (sententia est Augustini posterior); this was indeed closer to Augustine’s true mature opinion.[86] But then Baro also puts Augustine with his own preferred third option of conditional predestination. This posits one major shift in Augustine’s doctrine of predestination, a hypothesis that is supported by the careful and convincing argument of J. P. Burns.[87] This fact accounts for the ubiquitous appeal to Augustine from all corners of the predestination debate; it all depends on which Augustine one is reading.

The placement of other figures could be discussed, such as Baro’s apparently odd desire to classify the Molinist Jesuit Cardinal Bellarmine, a conditional predestinarian, under the second option. A comprehensive study would require extensive research into the writings of and received opinions about each of these figures, which is beyond the scope of this article. The point of this exercise is to show the similarities and diversities between the documents of the two men; these exist both because of their common backgrounds and contexts as well as their independence and diversity of experience.

IV Other Issues

A. Election/Salvation and Reprobation/Damnation

One of the factors that further complicates an already complex doctrine is the use and relation of the terms election, salvation, reprobation, and damnation. The distinctions of Reformed orthodoxy based election and reprobation both on the will of God alone, but salvation and damnation on Christ and sin, respectively. Thus, said Reformed orthodoxy, Christ is not the cause of election (contra Arminius), nor is sin the cause of reprobation. Election and reprobation concern the decree to predestine; salvation and damnation involve the execution of the decree through the necessary means. However, even with these distinctions in place, before major codification and Dort there were still flexible usage of and confusion over the terminology. For example, Junius delineated three meanings of the word “reprobation,” and Arminius responded by citing texts where Junius confounded the meanings.[88]

Given the state of confusion and the ambiguity of some of their own statements, one wonders if Baro and Arminius understood the distinction. Making the task of clarity more difficult is the dialogue with modern secondary sources that do not seem to grasp the basic distinctions; this current confusion over terminology cannot be ascribed to a lack of codification and clarification now,[89] though it may have contributed to the diversity of early orthodoxy. For example, when Baro discusses the second predestinarian option, he says it makes sin to be the cause of reprobation; he rightly points to this absurdity, because then everyone would be reprobate.[90] However, he later admits that his own doctrine has Christ as the cause of election and sin as the cause of reprobation,[91] the very thing he pointed out as an inconsistency in the second view. It appears that Baro’s use of the word “sin” here is just as semantically flexible as “reprobation.” When he declares “sin” to be the cause of reprobation in his schema, he later clarifies it as “the impenitency of people who persevere in sin.”[92] Elsewhere, Baro says God reprobates “unbelievers, rebels, and those stubborn in sins.”[93] This definition is presumably opposed to sin as the common, universal affliction of all humanity. Judging from this document, Baro seems to know the distinctions of the causes of reprobation and damnation, albeit with an imprecision indicative of the period.

Arminius, displaying the same imprecision of language when he described the first predestinarian view, wrote that God first decreed to damn certain men without regard to sin. Then in the next chief point, Arminius says that God ordained humanity to sin so that they would be guilty of eternal damnation (verdoemenisse), thus using “damnation” in two different senses.[94] The most explicit passage that demonstrates Arminius’s understanding comes under his twelfth objection against the supralapsarian option. There Arminius rejected the dichotomy between damnation (verdoemenisse) and reprobation (verwerpinghye) which drives supralapsarianism.[95] Thus, since Arminius rejects his opponents’ distinction between reprobation and damnation, it is not surprising that he would use them interchangeably at times. Baro and Arminius both seem to understand the necessary distinctions, but use the imprecise language that reflects that stage of codification.

B. Scientia Media

Even if the explicit Molinist setting of scientia media between scientia necessaria and scientia voluntaria was not known by some theologians, the language used by Molinists was common long before and outside the direct influence of Molina.[96] We cannot know whether Baro was influenced at all by Molina, but he used language consistent with scientia media.[97] When explaining his own third option, Baro explains, “For though it [his own view] allows Predestination to be immutable in God, it denies that such Predestination renders the wills of people immutable, and imposes necessity on them, lest God be made the author of sin and of the destruction of people.”[98] This evidence from Baro’s language is not sufficient to convict him as a Molinist, but there is proof that, despite the fact that Dutch Reformed orthodoxy refused to accept this new development in scholastic theology, Jesuit scholasticism in general infiltrated Reformed universities other than Leiden. Not only were the Cambridge divines accused of having too many scholastic and Jesuit books,[99] but the Oxford divine Walter Browne also owned, along with his five writings of Arminius, a copy of Molina’s Concordia when his library was catalogued in 1613.[100] Did Baro own and read Jesuit material? Did he read Molina’s Concordia, which was published six years before the writing of his Summa? The lack of direct evidence or connection to Baro prevents us from answering these questions with certainty, but, because of the circumstantial evidence available, we cannot rule out the possibility that Baro was influenced in some way by the Molinist category of scientia media.[101]

C. Similarities, Differences, and Connections

Having surveyed the predestination controversies surrounding Baro’s Summa and Arminius’s Declaratio, it will be helpful to summarize some of the similarities and differences between these two figures. They both received some training at Geneva, which C. Bangs has called both the seedbed of Dutch Calvinism and of Dutch Arminianism.[102] Although the amount of influence Genevan theology had on its individual students is debatable, in light of this study, and according to Bangs’s criteria, we can add English anti-Calvinism to the list of Genevan products. By the close of their careers, the doctrines of Baro and Arminius look strikingly similar. The resistibility of grace is central to both accounts of conditional predestination. The immutable decree of God and the free will of humanity are reconciled by both theologians with an appeal to scientia media, or at least a concept consistent with scientia media.

Because of their doctrine’s affinity with Jesuit theology, both Baro and Arminius were charged with teaching popish doctrine, an accusation whose severity is understandable in these two lands that had just experienced such conflict with Roman Catholics, theologically and politically, especially at the hands of Queen Mary in England and the Spanish invaders in the Low Countries. Like Barrett before him, Baro was accused by the Heads of teaching the “errors of popery.”[103] As Porter has written, this foreign professor was now a “rival claimant for the heritage of English protestant orthodoxy.”[104] In addition, it should not be overlooked that Baro’s French heritage added to his opponents’ suspicion of him. In the list of Margaret and Regius professors, Baro is the only one whose nationality is mentioned: “Peter Baro, a Frenchman.”[105] This statement would not be unusual if it had been the only mention of his foreign heritage. However, Matthew Hutton wished that Baro were back “in his own country.”[106] More significantly, in a letter to Dr. Neville, 8 December 1595, Whitgift instructs the Master of Trinity College to tell Baro that Queen Elizabeth “is greatly offended with him, for that he being a stranger and so well used dare presume to stir up or maintain any controversy in that place of what nature so ever.” Then Whitgift proceeds to add in Latin: “Non decet hominem peregrinum curiosum esse in aliena republica.”[107] In the Heads’ letter to Lord Burghley exactly three months later, attempting to show their lenience to the foreigner, they allude to the identical maxim with reference to Baro: “we who for the space of many years past have yielded him sundry benefits and favours here in the university, being a stranger, and forborne him when he hath often heretofore been busy and curious in aliena republica, broached new and strange questions in religion.”[108] Baro had, for several years up to that point, been busy and curious in England, which was to him a foreign country The Latin word curiosus may not only mean “curious or inquisitive,” but can connote a dangerous curiosity—like the kind that killed the cat—for things that are better left alone. Given the formulaic use of this phrase by Whitgift and the Heads, it is likely a reference to Cicero’s De Officiis, in which the orator contrasted the duties of private Roman citizens with the place of foreigners in matters pertaining to the state: “Peregrini autem atque incolae officium est nihil praeter suum nego-tium agere, nihil de alio anquirere minimeque esse in aliena re publica curiosum”[109]

In fact, this charge may go beyond mere xenophobia. In post-Augustan Latin, curiosus can mean “spy” The implication is that Baro, whether or not he himself knew it, was a papist infiltrator. This connotation is made more explicit as the Heads continue from the above sentence:

... he hath often heretofore been busy and curious in aliena republica, broached new and strange questions in religion; now, unless we should be careless of maintaining the truth of religion established, and of our duty in our places, cannot (being resolved and confirmed in that truth of the long professed and received doctrine) but continue to use all good means, and seek at your lordship’s hands some effectual remedy hereof; lest, by permitting passage to these errors, the whole body of popery should by little and little break in upon us, to the overthrow of our religion; and consequently the withdrawing of many, here and elsewhere, from true obedience to her majesty.[110]

Not only was Roman Catholicism perceived to be the constant threat to true religion, but, according to the Heads, the popish teaching of Baro would also result in a mass withdrawal of allegiance from Elizabeth’s Protestant monarchy These feelings had been sanctioned about two years earlier when England passed the 1593 Act against Recusants, that is, against Roman Catholics who would not attend the Church of England. It decreed,

For the better discovering and avoiding of all such traitorous and most dangerous conspiracies and attempts as are daily devised and practised against our most gracious sovereign lady, the queen’s majesty, and the happy estate of this commonweal by sundry wicked and seditious persons, who, terming themselves Catholics and being indeed spies and intelligencers, not only for her majesty’s foreign enemies, but also for rebellious and traitorous subjects born within her highness’s realms and dominions, and hiding their most detestable and devilish purposes under a false pretext of religion and conscience, do secretly wander and shift from place to place within this realm to corrupt and seduce her majesty’s subjects and to stir them to sedition and rebellion: be it ordained and enacted. .. that every person above the age of sixteen years, born within any of the queen’s majesty’s realms and dominions, or made denizen, being a popish recusant. .. and having any certain place of dwelling and abode within this realm, shall within forty days next after the end of this session of parliament. .. repair to their place of dwelling where they usually heretofore made their common abode, and shall not, any time after, pass or remove above five miles from thence.. . .[111]

In other words, the danger that Baro represented was not just theological error, but potential political treason.[112] The queen herself joined Baro’s detractors by stating that this foreigner, whose family she harbored in her country, should have conducted himself more peaceably.[113] A few months earlier, Baro had attempted to silence his critics by affirming both his “piety and reverence” towards the queen, and his willingness to shed his blood for her and the church she defended, precisely because of her kind treatment toward his family.[114] Baro’s attempt was apparently fruitless.

Somewhat analogous to Baro’s predicament was Arminius’s journey to Italy during his student years, which added to the suspicion surrounding him. Of course, Arminius and his followers rightly denied the wild stories of Arminius’s escapades with the Jesuits,[115] but, as we have seen, his theology was not without some Jesuit influence. Summing up the general Reformed sentiments on conditional predestination, Perkins had earlier said, “This platforme doth passing well agree with that doctrine concerning predestination, which is generally maintained in the Schooles, and Synagogues of the Papists: yea verily to speake the truth, it seemes to be borrowed even from thence.”[116] Therefore, “anti-Arminianism,” whether in England or on the continent, was to a large extent anti-papism.[117]

Furthermore, the relationship between the codification and the controversy was similar in both cases. For years at Cambridge, as one group responded and reacted to the other, the pendulum swung ever further, and the polarization increased.[118] The Lambeth Articles were drafted in response to Barrett and his insincere recantation. Then Baro, who did not object to the Thirty-nine Articles or even to the Lambeth Articles, but determining not to allow Whitaker’s sermon to be the last word, preached his own controversial sermon on the points before leaving Cambridge. Likewise, as Baro reacted against a strict interpretation of the Lambeth Articles, Arminius, not against the Reformed confessions per se, reacted against a strict (even if normative) interpretation of the Belgic Confession.[119] Both men subscribed to the codifications, but had to read them liberally. The liberal readings were rejected by the opponents of Baro and Arminius; the followers of Baro and Arminius simply rejected any reading of these codifications.

Especially in light of the similarities that unite these two narratives, although there is no direct dependence between Baro and Arminius, the question of indirect connections is nevertheless important. Perkins likely wrote his Golden Chaine in order to counter the opinions of Baro,[120] and when he refutes the doctrine of the “dissenting” view at the end of his later Treatise on Predestination, Perkins is probably referring to Baro’s doctrine.[121] When Arminius responds to Perkins’s treatise, he takes up the “dissenting” doctrine, probably Baro’s, and defends it as if it were his own.[122] However, even in light of these indirect connections, the similarities are chiefly due to the shared admiration for theologians such as Melanchthon and Hemmingius, as well as the common reaction against the common Reformed heritage of predestination, with Baro and Arminius attempting to remain Reformed and to modify the received predestination at the same time. This is the story of two men bound by a common Reformed heritage, influenced by common sources, engaging the same polemical predestinarian debate within the Reformed context.

V. Conclusion

The vast difference between these stories is the result effected by each controversy. Although Baro was, for a brief period, an intensely controversial figure in England and on the continent, he may be little known now because his views became acceptable and later normative in the Church of England. Whitaker’s Lambeth Articles, even after being amended by Archbishop Whitgift, were not intended as anything other than a rule for Cambridge, and they never became part of the Thirty-nine Articles. Lancelot Andrewes and John Overall, two of Baro’s contemporary sympathizers and immediate successors at Cambridge, wenton to become distinguished theologians and became bishops in the Church of England. On the contrary, the Dutch Remonstrants lived in controversy for ten years, before being ousted at the Synod of Dort in 1619. The Belgic Confession and Heidelberg Catechism not only remained normative for Dutch churches, but also were not amended as Arminius had hoped.[123] Arminius’s heirs apparent, Uitenbogaert and Episcopius, were ultimately not accepted in the Dutch churches and never became Dutch Reformed leaders (despite the latter’s name). Thus, the views of Baro and his followers did not become the point of contention in England that the views of Arminius and his followers became in the Low Countries.[124] If they had, we might today be talking about Calvinists and Baronians. This is not to suggest then that Baro was unimportant because his views did not remain as controversial in England as Arminianism remained on the continent. Rather, it is precisely because Baro resisted his colleagues at Cambridge and gave these views precedent for the generation to follow that “anti-Calvinism” was able to survive in the Church of England.

Although I have not attempted to give exhaustive accounts of the predestination doctrines of these men, after investigating the two treatises, the similarities are rather startling. Both propose to spell out the different options available in the doctrine of predestination, moving from what they commonly viewed as most extreme to their own similar views of conditional predestination. Baro’s second option and particularly Arminius’s second and third options prove that the relation of the fall to the decree was not the chief way to distinguish doctrines of predestination in early Reformed orthodoxy; thus, categorizing a doctrine as supra- or infralapsarian should not always be the primary way to distinguish certain pre-Dort accounts of predestination. The obvious differences between the documents demonstrate the lack of codification still present in early orthodoxy.[125] Exactly what predestination options were available, and which ones could be considered confessionally orthodox in the Reformed church, remained unclear during this period. To the extent that the lack of clarity contributed to the perpetuation of polemic and further polarization, the Dutch Reformed camp saw the need for more definite formulation, which was realized at Dort. Therefore, any examination of the development of the doctrine of predestination that ignores Baro and, especially, Arminius has also ignored an important step in this process of systematization. The opponents of unconditional predestination did as much as, if not more than, anyone else in this period to contribute to the codification and unmistakable boundaries of the Reformed doctrine of predestination.

Notes

1. The best treatment of Baro, and the one on which all subsequent studies are based to varying degrees, is H. C. Porter, Reformation and Reaction in Tudor Cambridge (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1958), 376–90; see also Peter G. Lake, Moderate Puritans and the Elizabethan Church (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1982), 227–42; Peter White, “The Cambridge Controversies of the 1590s,” in Predestination, Policy, and Polemic: Conflict and Consensus in the English Church from the Reformation to the Civil War (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), 110–17; Nicholas R. N. Tyacke, Anti-Calvinists: The Rise of English Arminianism, c. 1590–1640 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1987), 35–38; Lynne Courter Boughton, “Supralapsarianism and the Role of Metaphysics in Sixteenth-Century Reformed Theology,” WTJ48 (1986): 83; Mark R. Shaw, “William Perkins and the New Pelagians: Another Look at the Cambridge Predestination Controversy of the 1590’s,” WTJ 58 (1996): 278-99; Shaw’s discussion of Baro is merely a repetition of Porter’s.
2. Howard A. Slaatte, The Arminian Arm of Theology: The Theologies of John Fletcher, First Methodist Theologian, and His Precursor, James Arminius (Washington, D.C.: University Press of America, 1977), 17.
3. For another example of misunderstanding, see Shaw, “William Perkins,” 286, who incorrectly attributes to Baro a rejection of salvation by faith alone; Shaw (pp. 289, 291, 295–97) also insists on pejoratively calling Baro a “humanist,” and associates “humanism” with heterodoxy.
4. Porter, Reformation and Reaction, 281.
5. Although none examines the similarities and differences between Baro and Arminius, many studies investigate the relationship between the later English Arminians (Laudians) and Dutch Remonstrants, often in categories that do not apply to Baro or Arminius. See, e.g., A. W. Harrison, Arminianism (London: Duckworth, 1937), 122–56; David Neelands, “The Authority of St. Augustine in the Debates Leading to the Lambeth Articles” (paper presented at the Sixteenth Century Studies Conference, Pittsburgh, 31 October 2003), 16–18; idem, “Richard Hooker and the Debates about Predestination 1580–1600,” TJT17, no. 1 (2001): 198.
6. Peter Baro, Summa Trium de Praedestinatione sententiarum, in Praestantium ac Eruditorum Virorum Epistolae Ecclesiasticae et Theologicae (2d ed.; preface by Philip van Limborch; Amsterdam: Henricus Wetstenius, 1684), 29–32, is the most easily accessible transcription of the original Latin; it can found translated into English as Summary of Three Opinions concerning Predestination, in The Works of James Arminius (London ed.; trans. James Nichols and William Nichols; London, 1825, 1828, 1875; repr. with introduction by Carl Bangs; 3 vols.; Grand Rapids: Baker, 1986), 1:92–100.
7. Jacob Arminius, Verclaringhe Iacobi Arminii Saliger ghedachten (Leiden: Thomas Basson, 1610); reprinted, Verklaring van Jacobus Arminius, afgelegdin de vergadering van de staten van Holland op 30 Oktober 1608 (ed. G. J. Hoenderdaal; Lochem: De Tijdstroom, 1960); translated into Latin as Declaratio sen-tentiae authoris horum operum de praedestinatione, providentia Dei, libero arbitrio, gratia Dei, divinitate Filii Dei, & de iustificatione hominis coram Deo, in Opera Theologica (Frankfurt: Wolfgang Hoffmann, 1635), 74–107; translated into English as The Just Mans Defence, or, The Declaration of the Judgement of James Arminius.. . concerning the Principal Points of Religion, to which is added, Nine Questions Exhibited by the Deputies of the Synod. .., (trans. Tobias Conyers; London: Printed for Henry Eversden, 1657); and in The Works of James Arminius, 1:580–732. References to the Declaratio correspond to the 1960 Dutch reprint. Translations from the original Dutch are mine. Latin references to this Dutch document will only be given when the terminology is deemed important; although not translated into Latin by Arminius, Latin terminology can nevertheless serve as a clue to the thought of the author, given the theological precedence and sophistication of Latin over early seventeenth century Dutch. Page references to Arminius’s other documents will be given to the Latin Opera (OT) and The Works of James Arminius (Works with volume number). I generally use the Nichols translation, but may alter the translation based on the original Latin.
8. Most of Arminius sextant works are available in Works. The three most useful recent secondary treatments of Arminius are Carl Bangs, Arminius: A Study in the Dutch Reformation (1971; repr., Eugene, Ore.: Wipf and Stock, 1998); Richard A. Muller, God, Creation and Providence in the Thought of Jacob Arminius: Sources and Directions of Scholastic Protestantism in the Era ofEarly Orthodoxy (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1991); Evert Dekker, Rijker dan Midas: Vrijheid, genade en predestinate in de theologie van Jacobus Arminius, 1559–1609 (Zoetermeer, The Netherlands: Boekencentrum, 1993).
9. Baro’s biographical information is dependent primarily on Dictionary of National Biography (vol. 3; ed. Leslie Stephen and Sidney Lee; London: Smith, Elder & Co., 1885), 265–67; and secondarily on Porter, Reformation and Reaction, 376–77.
10. Peter Baro, Defide, ejusqueortu, etnatura,plana acdilucida explicatio (London: RichardDayus, 1580); Depraestantia etdignitate divinae legis libri duo in quibus (London: Henricus Midletonus, 1587); Fower Sermons and Two Questions, in Andreas Hyperius, A speciall treatise of Gods providence and of comforts against all kinde of crosses and calamities to be drawne from the same, with an exposition of the 107. Psalme (trans. John Ludham; London: John Wolfe, 1588), 375–541; In Jonam prophetam praelectiones 39 (London: Joannes Dayus, 1579); Epistola Nicolao Hemmingio, Calend. Aprilis 1596, in Praestantium ac Eruditorum Virorum Epistolae Ecclesiasticae et Theologicae (2d ed.; preface by Philip van Limborch; Amsterdam: Henricus Wetstenius, 1684), 29; ET “Letter to Hemmingius,” 1 April 1596, in Works, 1:91–92; Summa Trium de Praedestinatione sententiarum, translated as Summary of Three Opinions concerning Predestination (see n. 6 above). Other manuscripts can be found at the University Archives and University Library Cambridge; see Porter, Reformation and Reaction, 430–32. Baro’s importance, like that of many historical figures, has been forgotten only in modern times. Even before its publication, his Summa was widely distributed after his death. Furthermore, his treatise DeFide generated a response that went through three editions (E. H., De Fide Eiusque Ortu, et Natura: Contra P Baronis Stempani [London: Edouardus Aldaeus, 1592; 2d ed., London: Petrus Cole, 1644; 3d ed., London: Matthaeus Simmons, 1653]). Clearly the field is wide open for scholarly work on Baro’s theology in its context.
11. Thomas Fuller, The History of the University of Cambridge since the Conquest, appended to The Church-History of Britain (London: for John Williams, 1655), 145–46; John Strype, Annals of the Reformation and Establishment of Religion (4 vols. printed in 7; 1708–9; repr., 1824; repr., New York: Burt Franklin, n.d.), III/1:68–69; Porter, Reformation and Reaction, 378; White, “Cambridge Controversies,” 111; Shaw, “William Perkins,” 280–81. John Strype mentions that Baro and William Whitaker were involved in a controversy in 1593, The Life and Acts of John Whitgift, D.D. (3 vols.; 1718; repr., Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1822), 3:227. Strype collected and printed many original manuscripts, some of which are no longer extant.
12. On the outstanding character of Baro, see Fuller, History of the University, 153. Concerning his erudition, Fuller claims that “he who denieth learning in Baro, (so witnessed in his Works) plainly affirmeth no schollarship in himself “ (ibid.).
13. Porter, Reformation and Reaction, 377–78. In the Heads’ letter to Lord Burghley, 8 March 1596 (I have edited the years of some English documents to correspond with correct Continental dates), they indicate that Baro had been teaching contrary doctrine for “the space of these fourteen or fifteen years” (in Strype, Annals of the Reformation, IV:321). Baro’s name was linked with the Oxford “anti-Calvinist” Anthony Corro as early as 1580 (Tyacke, Anti-Calvinists, 58–59).
14. According to Strype (Life and Acts of Whitgift, 2:228), Calvin’s “way of explaining the divine decrees of Predestination” began to prevail at Cambridge toward the end of Queen Elizabeth’s reign, but not before. See Strype, Life and Acts of Whitgift, 2:227–314, for more detailed documentation of the events leading up to the Lambeth Articles and the controversy surrounding them.
15. William Barrett, “Recantatio Mri. Barret.” This document was written by Robert Some for Barrett to read; the Latin version is in William Prynne, Anti-Arminianisme: Or The Church of Englands old antithesis to new Arminianisme ([London:] Imprinted [by Elizabeth Allde for Michael Sparke], 1630), 67–70; and Strype, Life and Acts of Whitgift, 3:317–20; an English translation may be found in Prynne, Anti-Arminianisme, 56–59; and Fuller, History of the University, 150–51.
16. Barrett, in Prynne, Anti-Arminianisme, 57, 67; Strype, Life and Acts of Whitgift, 3:317; Fuller, History of the University, 150. An interesting debate took place over the terms certitudo et securitas de salute, a discussion of which is beyond the scope of this article.
17. Barrett, in Prynne, Anti-Arminianisme, 58–59, 68–69; Strype, Life and Acts of Whitgift, 3:318–19; Fuller, History of the University, 151. Strype (Life and Acts of Whitgift, 2:229) comments that Barrett had urged his auditors not to read these men, describing them with “very unhandsome terms.”
18. Prynne, Anti-Arminianisme, 61; Fuller, History of the University, 151; Strype, Life and Acts of Whit-gift, 2:231; Porter, Reformation and Reaction, 345–46. See also the acts of the university concerning the Barrett case in Prynne, Anti-Arminianisme, 63–66.
19. Strype, Life and Acts of Whitgift, 2:233, 236–37. For biographical information on Whitgift, see George Paule, The Life of the Most Reverend and Religious Prelate John Whitgift, Lord Archbishop of Canterbury (London: Thomas Snodham, 1612), and Strype, Life and Acts of Whitgift.
20. The pamphlet, along with Barrett’s own marginal corrections, is in Strype, Life and Acts of Whitgift, 3:320.
21. Strype, Life and Acts of Whitgift, 2:238–40, 254. In “A Brief Touching Mr Barrett,” Whitgift gave his own summary of the events leading up to the approval of the Lambeth Articles, in The Works of John Whitgift, D.D. (3 vols.; Parker Society; ed. John Ayre; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1853), 3:614–15; also in Strype, Life and Acts of Whitgift, 2:276–77.
22. Dewey Wallace, Puritans and Predestination: Grace in English Protestant Theology, 1525–1695 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press,1982), 67; see Neelands, “Authority of St. Augustine,”1–16. Elizabeth Gilliam and W. J. Tighe (“To ‘Run with the Time’: Archbishop Whitgift, the Lambeth Articles, and the Politics of Theological Ambiguity in Late Elizabethan England,” Sixteenth Century Journal 23, no. 2 [1992]: 325-40) argue that the Lambeth Articles were really written with the imminent death of Queen Elizabeth in mind. Although this political situation may explain the initial reticence of Whitgift, the Articles were primarily written (by Whitaker) to silence people like Barrett.
23. For Whitaker’s original Latin articles, see W. D. Sargeaunt, “The Lambeth Articles,” JTS 12 (1911): 427-28; for the finalized Latin articles, which changed the wording of propositions 2, 5, 6, and 7, see Prynne, Anti-Arminianisme, 12–14; and Philip Schaff, The Creeds of Christendom, with a History and Critical Notes (4th ed.; New York: Harper & Bros., 1919), 3:523–24; for both versions juxtaposed with commentary on the changes, see F. G., Articuli Lambethani (London: G. D., 1651), 12–19.
24. William Whitaker, Cygnea Cantio Guilielmi Whitakeri, hoc est, ultima illius concio ad clerum. .. Octob. 9. Anno Dom. 1595, in Praelectiones doctissimi viri Guilielmi Whitakeri (Cambridge: Johannes Legat, 1599).
25. According to Baro’s “Letter to Lord Burghley, 9 February 1596,” in Strype, Life and Acts of Whitgift, 3:344–45, his sermon consisted of three points. (1) Man is created in God’s likeness, as John of Damascus teaches. (2) Christ died for all sufficiently as Church of England Article 31 teaches, contra Johann Piscator. (3) God’s promises are accomplished (factas) in Christ, as Article 17 teaches. It is evident from this letter that Baro’s sermon was a polemic against a book by Johann Piscator, professor at Herborn (perhaps his compilation of aphorisms from Calvin’s Institutes), which Baro felt was a harmful influence on too many young students (“Sed tantum evangelicam veritatem contra Johannem Piscatorem defendere: cujus libellum in multorum juvenum manibus esse normam” [reading normam for noram]). Baro was probably using Piscator as a target through which he could attack his Cambridge colleagues. See also Strype, Life and Acts of Whitgift, 2:290–91, 308.
26. Baro (“Letter to Lord Burghley,” in Strype, Life and Acts of Whitgift, 3:345) says his sermon contained nothing contrary to the Lambeth Articles (“me itaque contra novos articulos non dixisse quic-quam, nec voluisse”). Baro sent his own “Explicatio orthodoxa” to Whitgift, demonstrating his subscription to and interpretation of all nine points of the Lambeth Articles; the Latin text is in Strype, Life and Acts of Whitgift, 3:340–42. Baro explains the second article, which would seem to cause the most problem for his view, by identifying God’s etidokia not as a secret will for choosing some people, but the divine will favorable to all people. From the beginning, the Lambeth Articles received a mixed reception. See Fuller, Church-History, Book IX, 231–32, for some of the various opinions. Prynne (Anti-Arminianisme, 258), who was fighting later Arminianism in England, says the Lambeth Articles are a “ful declaration of the professed, the undoubted Doctrines of our Church.” Prynne (Anti-Arminianisme, 264) also indicates that some people claimed that Barrett and Baro, rather than the Lambeth Articles, represented the true doctrine of the Church of England. Modern historians still do not agree on the Articles. Sargeaunt (“Lambeth Articles,” 436) says the Articles do not teach absolute, unconditional predestination, but are a concession to the Heads at Cambridge. By contrast, J. V Fesko (Diversity within the Reformed Tradition: Supra- and Infralapsarianism in Calvin, Dort, and Westminster [Jackson, Miss.: Reformed Academic Press, 2001], 243–44) thinks that the Lambeth Articles “reflect supralapsarianism,” scoring a “victory” for the supporters of “Calvin and Beza’s supralapsarianism.” Although Sargeaunt may go too far in his attempt to rescue the Lambeth Articles from the Reformed party, Fesko has misunderstood the context and intent of the Articles, not to mention what makes a predestination doctrine supralapsarian. He is right to say that the Articles can support a supralapsarian interpretation, but the fact that Baro and Lancelot Andrewes both subscribed to the Articles shows that it can hardly be considered a supralapsarian victory The ambiguity of the Articles allowed them to be approved by theologians as diverse as Whitaker and Baro.
27. Fuller, History of the University, 152–53; Porter, Reformation and Reaction, 380–90. There is a significant debate about the nature of sixteenth century Cambridge Calvinism, and of Archbishop Whitgift in particular. On the one hand, see Porter, Reformation and Reaction, 337–67; and especially Peter White, “Cambridge Controversies”; idem, “The Rise of Arminianism Reconsidered,” Past and Present 101 (1983): 34-54; idem, “The Rise of Arminianism Reconsidered: A Rejoinder,” Past and Present 115 (1987): 217-29. Both Porter and White assume a broad range of normative theology that included conditional and unconditional predestination, and that Whitgift was largely sympathetic to the cause of Barrett and, later, Baro. On the other hand, see Peter G. Lake, Moderate Puritans, 209–10, 235–39; idem, “Calvinism and the English Church, 1570–1635,” Past and Present 114 (1987): 32-76; and especially N. R. N. Tyacke, Anti-Calvinists, 31; idem, “Debate: The Rise of Arminianism Reconsidered,” Past and Present 115 (1987): 201-16. Lake and Tyacke assume that Cambridge was more strictly Calvinist and that Whitgift and the Lambeth Articles were unyielding in orthodox Calvinism. In my judgment, Whitgift, along with the Lambeth Articles that received his approval, were a moderating influence in England. He did not approve of Barrett’s attitude, but seems to have endorsed some of his points against the more strict Calvinist Heads. See Sargeaunt, “Lambeth Articles,” 257–59. Gilliam and Tighe (“‘Run with the Time,”’ 339), accounting for Whitgift’s wavering, argue persuasively that he was playing both sides of the debate, given the unknown future of the English crown and of the theological direction of the Church of England.
28. Lake, Moderate Puritans, 202–3.
29. See Porter, Reformation and Reaction, 347.
30. Porter, Reformation and Reaction, 349–57; Lake, Moderate Puritans, 209.
31. Porter, Reformation and Reaction, 385.
32. Perkins, A Golden Chaine: or, the Description of Theologie, in Workes of Perkins (3 vols.; London, 1631), 1:10; see Porter, Reformation and Reaction, 385–89; Tyacke, Anti-Calvinists, 35. Perkins resists calling his opponents full blown “Pelagians” in A Treatise of the Manner and Order of Predestination, in Workes of Perkins, 2:639.
33. Baro, Epistola, 29a; Work s, 1:92; see Porter (Reformation and Reaction, 314) who reports, on the contrary, that the Calvinist faculty Heads of Cambridge said that only recently was their doctrine of unconditional predestination being challenged. By all accounts, Baro’s judgment of the situation was more accurate. See Willem Nijenhuis, Adrianus Saravia (c. 1532–1613): Dutch Calvinist, first Reformed defender of the English episcopal Church order on the basis of the ius divinum (Leiden: Brill, 1980), 183–84.
34. See Porter, Reformation and Reaction, 386. The original 1613 edition of Baro’s treatise, Petri Baronis Summa Trium de Praedestinatione Sententiarum (Hardrovici: Thomas Henricus, 1513 [1613]), included Whitaker’s Cygnea Cantio, as well as direct responses by Junius and Piscator. The latter may have been inspired by the fact that Baro’s sermon used him as the foil.
35. Arminius’s Declaratio Sententiae (Verklaring), which he deliveredon20October 1608, unlike Baro’s Summa, covers more than predestination; but predestination is the chief concern of Arminius’s defense, and the point on which the remainder of his discussion depends.
36. Perkins, Golden Chaine, 11.
37. Whitaker, Cygnea Cantio, 4.
38. Baro, Summa, 29b; Works, 1:92.
39. Arminius, Declaratio, 63, 104; Works, 1:614, 653.
40. Usually, supralapsarianism also considers humanity as not yet created. See Richard A. Muller, Dictionary of Latin and Greek Theological Terms: Drawn Principally from Protestant Scholastic Theology (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1985), for more detailed definitions of supra- and infralapsarianism.
41. Porter, Reformation and Reaction, 387, says Baro also mentions Robert Some, a Cambridge theologian, along with Calvin and Beza, but neither the Latin edition of 1684 nor the original 1613 publication mentions Some. Boughton (“Supralapsarianism,” 83) and Shaw (“William Perkins,” 296) follow Porter in this judgment, but without any use of the primary documents, English or Latin.
42. Baro, Summa, 29b, “.. . ut hi volunt, Lutheri Augustinique posterior”; Works, 1:92. Baro and Arminius both assign the various options to different thinkers. The significance of these assignments will be discussed below.
43. Baro, Summa, 29b; Works, 1:92–93.
44. Baro, Summa, 29b; Works, 1:93.
45. Baro, Summa, 29b–30a; Works, 1:93.
46. Baro, “Letter to Whitgift, 13 December 1595,” in Strype, Life and Acts of Whitgift, 2:288.
47. Arminius, Declaratio, 63; Works, 1:614.
48. For all twenty reasons, see Arminius, Declaratio, 71–96; Works, 1:618–45. Even if Arminius’s critique of the first option is far more extensive than Baro’s critique, Arminius does not fail to emphasize Baro’s chief point, and he does so to a greater degree.
49. Arminius, Declaratio, 85; OT, 88; Works, 1:629–30.
50. John Calvin (Defensio Sanae et Orthodoxae Doctrinae de Servitute et Liberatione Humani Arbitrii adversus Calumnias Alberti Pighii Campensis, in Ioannis Calvini Opera Quae Supersunt Omnia [vol. 6; Brunswick: Schwetschke, 1867], 258), in response to Albert Pighius’s similar claim, says that “such an opinion is commonly expressed by people speaking on the basis of their carnal understanding.”
51. Baro, Summa, 30a; Works, 1:93.
52. Baro, Summa, 30a; Works, 1:94.
53. The criteria distinguishing supralapsarianism from infralapsarianism are often debated and misunderstood. The most detailed monograph on the lapsarian question, Klaas Dijk, De strijd over Infra- en Supralapsarisme in de Gereformeerde Kerken van Nederland (Kampen: Kok, 1912), 30–38, claims that supralapsarianism is distinct for including the fall in the decree, which is to be distinguished from infralapsarianism, which is simply God’s foreknowledge of the fall. Dijk claims that the question of the order of the decrees and the object of predestination is not the main issue of the debate between supra- and infralapsarianism. On the contrary, among other issues, Baro was indeed debating the object of predestination and Arminius was debating the order and content of the decrees.
54. Baro, Summa, 30a-b; Works, 1:95. Baro seems to be saying that, for unconditional predestination, the divine decree is the efficient principle, and there is no other cause for election and reprobation other than God’s absolute will. Furthermore, whether Baro rightly understands the distinction between reprobation and damnation is a valid question that will be addressed below.
55. Baro, Summa, 30b; Works, 1:96.
56. See, e.g., Francis Turretin ( Institutio Theologiae Elencticae [Edinburgh: J. D. Lowe, 1847–48], IVix) who thought in these lapsarian terms, but did not use the terminology in the familiar way. Supra lapsum remains standard, but Turretin, himself generally considered as an infralapsarian, takes the position of in lapsu, and he describes the “semi-Pelagian” or “Arminian” view as infra lapsum. See especially Turretin, Institutio IVix.3–4, 31. This evidence further demonstrates the diversity of terms used to describe the different options, even into the period of high orthodoxy.
57. Baro, Summa, 30b; Works, 1:95–96.
58. Fesko, Diversity within the Reformed Tradition, xxii.
59. Fesko (ibid., 57-80), sometimes ignoring his own definitions of lapsarian options, has Calvin holding to a strict supralapsarianism.
60. Arminius, Declaratio, 101–3; Works, 1:647–53.
61. Baro, Summa, 31a; Works, 1:96–97.
62. Baro, Summa, 31a; Works, 1:96.
63. Baro, Summa, 31a; Works, 1:97.
64. Baro, Summa, 31a; Works, 1:97–98.
65. Baro, Summa, 31a-b; Works, 1:98.
66. Arminius, Declaratio, 108–9; OT, 96; Works, 1:654–55.
67. See also Arminius, Disputationes privatae XXIV; Muller, God, Creation, 230, 238–40, 251. Muller calls the Arminian system a “theology of creation” (ibid., 268).
68. Arminius’s Declaratio emphasizes the role of prevenient grace more than Baro does in his Summa. It would be premature, however, to conclude from only one document that Baro de-emphasizes grace.
69. Arminius, Epistola ad Hippolytum a` Collibus, in OT, 771; Works, 2:699. Moreover, Arminius sees his second predestinarian option, which is the modified supralapsarianism, as closer to the classic infralapsarianism than to the classic supralapsarianism, which would not be the case if he were concerned merely with the lapsarian question.
70. Perkins, Golden Chaine, 10.
71. Whitaker, Cygnea Cantio, 4.
72. Baro, Summa; Works, 1:92.
73. Arminius, Iacobi Arminii amica cum D. Francisco Iunio de Praedestinatione, per litteras habita Collatio, in OT,364; Works, 3:18.
74. See Works, 1:88, where J. Nichols distinguishes Beza’s supralapsarianism from Calvin’s infra-lapsarianism, contra the categories of Baro and Arminius.
75. Baro must have been familiar with the content of the Institutes, since he received his ordination in Geneva from Calvin in 1560, a year after the last edition of the Institutes was published. Likewise, Arminius owned several editions of the Institutes, in addition to many treatises and commentaries by Calvin. See The Auction Catalogue of the Library of J. Arminius (facsimile ed.; Utrecht: HES Publishers, 1985), 3–5, 11–12, 15–17, 19–20, 22, 45, 49.
76. See, e.g., Arminius, Collatio cum Iunio, in OT, 364–65; Works, 3:18–20.
77. Baro, Summa, b, 32; Works, 1:96, 100.
78. Arminius, Declaratio 3-74, 94–95; Works, l:620–21, 642.
79. Baro, Summa, 31b; Works, 1:98–99. Baro seems to be implicitly admitting that the controversy cannot be decided by biblical exegesis alone. The Christian tradition, and I might add, theological presuppositions, play an important and decisive role in resolving this question.
80. Baro, Summa, 9b; Works, 1:92.
81. Arminius, Declaratio, 94; Works, 1:642.
82. Matthew Hutton, Articles Agreed on, and the Archbishop of York s Opinion of Them, in Works of Whitgift, 3:612–13, emphasis mine: “Hae theses ex sacris literis vel aperte colligi, vel necessaria consecutione deduci possunt, et ex scriptis Augustini.” Hutton records the specific reference to Augustine’s works under each point taken from Augustine. See Neelands, ‘Authority of St. Augustine,” 19–35; idem, “Richard Hooker,” 196–97.
83. Baro Summa, 32a; Works, 1:99- calls the charge of P elagianism an illiberal calumny (illiberalis calumnia).
84. Baro, Summa, in Works, 1:92–93, 96.
85. Porter ( Reformation and Reaction, 387) seems to allow three views with two shifts.
86. Baro, Summa, 30a; Works, 1:93. Contra Porter (Reformation and Reaction, 387) who, since he thinks Baro portrays Augustine with three views, is forced to interpret this as Augustine’s “middle period.” However, since Baro uses posterior to describe both, there is no linguistic support for making one “later” and one “middle.”
87. J. Patout Burns (The Development of Augustine’s Doctrine of Operative Grace [Paris: Etudes Augustiniennes, 1980]) argues that a shift took place by the time of his Epistula 194 to the future pope, Sixtus of Rome, a Pelagian sympathizer, in 418 C.E. The shift was from an external, congruous grace to an interior movement of the Holy Spirit on the will of the elect.
88. Arminius, Collatio cum Iunio, in OT, 367–68; Works, 3:24–25.
89. In these cases, it seems best to avoid secondary dialogue unless the writer clearly knows the subject. For example, White (“Cambridge Controversies,” 114, 120) seems to be ignorant of the distinction of election/salvation and reprobation/damnation. Tyacke (“Debate,” 204–5) does understand the distinction and has taken White to task for his apparent confusion.
90. Baro, Summa, 30b; Works, 1:95. Baro is obviously polemicizing against Sohnius and Zanchius by pushing apart the reprobation/damnation distinction.
91. Baro, Summa, 31a; Works, 1:97. See Baro, “Explicatio orthodoxa,” in Strype, Life and Acts of Whitgift, 3:340: “Causa movens aut efficiens praedestinationis credentium ad vitam [est]. .. in omnes propensa Dei Opt. Max. misericors voluntas, seu eÙdok…a.” Thus, in contrast to unconditional predestination, whose only cause (according to Baro) is God’s will, Baro’s conditional election has the efficient cause as God’s merciful will favorably disposed unto all (in omnes), and the material cause as Christ.
92. Baro, Summa, 31b; Works, 1:98.
93. Baro, “Explicatio orthodoxa,” in Strype, Life and Acts of Whitgift, 3:340: “incredulos, rebelles, et in peccatis contumaces.”
94. Arminius, Declaratio, 70; Works, 1:618.
95. Arminius, Declaratio, 83; Works, 1:628.
96. E.g., Augustine (De Dono Perseverantiae IX.xxii [Washington D.C.: Catholic University of America Press, 1956]) seems to be countering a kind of proto-scientia media.
97. Baro, Summa, in Works, 1:96. See Luis de Molina, On Divine Foreknowledge (Part IV of the Concordia; trans. Alfred J. Freddoso; Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1988).
98. Baro, Summa, 31b; Works, 1:98.
99. Lake (Moderate Puritans, 208) quotes a letter from the Cambridge Heads to Whitgift.
100. Tyacke, Anti-Calvinists, 65–66.
101. On Arminius’s use of scientia media, see Evert Dekker, “Was Arminius a Molinist?” Sixteenth CenturyJournal27, no.2(1996): 337-52; Richard A. Muller, God, Creation,143–66; idem, “God, Predestination, and the Integrity of the Created Order: A Note on Patterns in Arminius’ Theology,” in Later Calvinism (ed. Fred W. Graham: Kirksville, Mo.: Sixteenth Century Journal Publishers, 1994), 441–43.
102. C. Bangs, Arminius, 77.
103. See Whitgift, Works of Whitgift, 3:615; Whitgift with the Heads of Cambridge, “Letter to Lord Burghley, 8 March 1596,” in Strype, Annals of the Reformation, IV:320–22. That Whitgift was sensitive to these matters is evident, for example, in the thesis he defended for his own doctorate degree in 1567: “Papa est ille antichristus” (Works of Whitgift, 3:vi).
104. Porter, Reformation and Reaction, 239–40.
105. Fuller, History of the University, 124. Prynne (Anti-Arminianisme, 268) says that Baro was “an exotique Frenchman” [reading exotique for exortique]. Prynne, who did not care for Baro’s teaching, went on to say that Baro was “at the very best a forraigner.”
106. Strype, Life and Acts of Whitgift, 2:309.
107. John Whitgift, “Letter to Dr Nevile, 8 December 1595,” in Works of Whitgift, 3:617: “It is not fitting for a foreign person to be curious in an alien republic.”
108. Heads of Cambridge, “Letter to Lord Burghley,” in Prynne, Anti-Arminianisme, 256; Strype, Annals of the Reformation, IV:321.
109. Marcus Tullius Cicero, De Officiis .xxxiv.125, with my emphasis on the verbal similarities with Whitgift and the Heads. “Moreover, it is the duty of the foreigner and foreign resident to mind nothing except his own business, to inquire about nothing concerning another and least of all to be curious [or, to meddle] in an alien republic.
110. Heads of Cambridge, Letter to Lord Burghley in Prynne, Anti-Arminianisme, 256; Strype, Annals of the Reformation, IV:321.
111. “The Act against Recusants, 1593,” in Henry Gee and William John Hardy, eds., Documents Illustrative of English Church History (London: Macmillan & Co., 1921), 499–500, emphasis mine.
112. Hans J. Hillerbrand (“The ‘Other’ in the Age of the Reformation: Reflections on Social Control and Deviance in the Sixteenth Century,” in Infinite Boundaries: Order, Disorder, and Reorder in Early Modern German Culture [ed. Max Reinhart; Sixteenth Century Essays and Studies, vol. 40; Kirksville, Mo.: Sixteenth Century Journal Publishers, 1998], 245–69), in his discussion of the sixteenth-century fear of the Other, notes that the Other was seen as a threat to the established order. This suspicion certainly holds true in the contemporary perceptions of Baro, a national and theological “Other.” However outrageous it may have been to imply such an accusation against Baro, such fears of Roman Catholic treason were occasionally confirmed, the most notable example being the Gunpowder Plot of 1605, a foiled conspiracy to blow up Parliament and King James. Of course, such extreme actions may be blamed in part on harsh legislation, such as the act of 1593, making the fear a self-fulfilling prophecy.
113. Strype, Life and Acts of Whitgift, 2:287.
114. Baro, “Letter to Whitgift,” in Strype, Life and Acts of Whitgift, 2:288–89.
115. See Caspar Brandt, The Life of James Arminius, D.D. (trans. John Guthrie; Nashville: Stevenson & Owen, 1857), 53; Nathan Bangs, The Life of James Arminius, D.D., Compiled from His Life and Writings, as Published by Mr. James Nichols (New York: Harper & Bros., 1843), 25–26; C. Bangs, Arminius, 78–79.
116. Perkins, Treatise of Predestination, 640.
117. Prynne (Anti-Arminianisme, 258) says that Arminianism is a “Bridge, an Usher unto grosse Popery; yea a meanes to draw away Subjects from their obedience to his Maiestie.” Prynne (ibid., 61) is also quick to point out how Barrett (like Bertius and other Arminians) turned “papist.” An anti-Arminian pamphlet was published in English (Amsterdam: Hendrick Laurentz, 1628) containing a poem and illustration. The poem begins, “Great King protect us with thy gratious hand,/Or else Armenius will o’re spred this Land.” The illustration, which the poem describes, shows Arminius holding the hand of papal “Heresia” and listening to the Jesuits, but rejecting biblical “Veritas.”
118. See Tyacke, Anti-Calvinists, 35.
119. Declaratio, 60–61; Works, 1:609.
120. Perkins (Golden Chaine, 11) mentions the doctrine of the old and new Pelagians, his brief description of which sounds strikingly similar to Baro’s doctrine.
121. Perkins, Treatise of Predestination, 627–40.
122. Arminius, Examen modestum praedestinationis Perkinsianae, in OT, 588–611; Works, 3:439–84. Tyacke (Anti-Calvinists, 36) mentions Richard “Dutch” Thompson, who studied at Cambridge in the 1580s and knew Arminius well during the 1590s. On a related note, the entry for “Enchiridion Baronis” in Arminius’s Auction Catalogue, 44, does not seem to be the work of Peter Baro.
123. Declaratio, 126–36; Works, 1:701–30.
124. See Carl Bangs, “‘All the Best Bishoprics and Deaneries’: The Enigma of Arminian Politics,” CH 42 (1973): 5-16.
125. It is worth asking whether the modern categories likewise impose a similar, overly simplistic view of predestination options after the era of early orthodoxy as well.