Muller:

1.2 Debate Within the Reformed Tradition

The eras of the Reformation and of Reformed orthodoxy were times of intense polemic and debate, initially over issues of reform and, as the Reformation progressed and the church divided, over issues of confessional identity and confessional boundaries. There were also a large number or debates, varying in intensity, which took place over theological and philosophical issues not immediately related to confessional definition. A tentative distinction of these different types of debate–recognizing that the categories are not rigidly defined and include some overlapping aspects–can serve both to clarify the nature of Reformed orthodoxy and to characterize the direction of investigation undertaken by the present volume. The main point of the categories is to highlight not only the diversity of Reformed theology in the era of orthodoxy but also the diversity of the debates as they played out across a spectrum from major encounters requiring Confessional statement and, indeed, condemnation or disapproval, to often bitter arguments of considerably lesser weight that addressed issues of preference in theological formulation without directly broaching questions of confessionality or leading to new confessional formulae.

Three kinds of kinds of debate have been most frequently referenced in the older scholarship–namely I) the polemical debates with other confessionalities, whether Lutheran, Roman, Socinian, or Anabaptist; 2) debates concerning particular lines of doctrinal argument that transgressed acknowledged confessional boundaries-notably the controversies over Samuel Huber’s universalism and Jacob Arminius’ views on grace and predestination; and 3) debates internal to the Reformed confessional tradition that, in one way or another, pressed questions of the precise meaning of the confessional documents, such as the debates over eschatology or over various elements of Salmurian theology as proposed by Moises Amyraut, Paul Testard, Josue La Place, Samuel Morus, but that did not result in synodical decisions of heresy–although sometimes yielding, as in the case of the Articles of Morus and the Formula Consensus Helvetica, confessional documents of a more limited scope.

There are also several other types of debate characteristic of the era, debates that took place far more frequently, but that have generally been given less attention. Thus there were 4) debates over philosophical issues, often concerned with the impact of the new rationalisms on fundamental understandings in logic, physics, and metaphysics and, by extension, on theological formulation. There were also, 5) debates concerning non- or sub-confessional issues that were nevertheless of a fairly significant theological weight that threatened to rise to the confessional level. Here we count the supralapsarian-infralapsarian debates, debates over what for lack of a better term can be called non-Amyraldian hypothetical universalism, over the imputation mediate or immediate of Adam’s sin to his posterity, over the imputation of Christ’s active obedience to believers, and the debates related to elements of Cocceian theology. Finally, 6) there were a large number of theological topics subject to rather different formulations on the part of the Reformed orthodox that sometimes issued in fairly heated interchanges among theologians but that, arguably, did not rise to the level of the debates just noted in the fifth category. By way of example, there were differences in understanding of divine simplicity in relation to the predication of divine attributes and the problem of divine knowledge of future propositions.

1.3 Debates Concerning Confessional Boundaries–Crossing Over or Pressing the Boundary

Leaving aside the first category, the debates with other confessionalities, as not belonging to the scope of the present study and concentrating specifically on debates within the Reformed tradition, some comment is necessary concerning the difference between the second and third kinds of debate namely those identifying transgressions of confessional boundaries and those remaining within the confessional limits – given the way in which such differences were typically glossed over in the older scholarship, particularly when the debates were analyzed in terms of the “Calvin against the Calvinists” paradigm. The late sixteenth- and early seventeenth-century debates over universalistic and synergistic soteriologies, notably those over Huber’s and Arminius’ understandings of grace and predestination arose over the thought of theologians who were Reformed in terms of their ecclesial or confessional location but whose thought contradicted basic statements of the Reformed confessions, rendering these debates rather different from the debates over Amyraut’s theology, given that not only was Amyraut Reformed in ecclesial and confessional location but his theology also arguably fell within the boundaries established by the Gallican Confession and the Canons of Dort. Huber’s and Arminius’ theologies did not fall within the boundaries established by such confessional documents as the Second Helvetic Confession, the Belgic Confession, and the Heidelberg Catechism.¹⁸

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Moore:

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6.4.2 The Westminster Confession

Finding modified or intentionally ambiguous codification in the Westminster Confession of Faith (WCF) is altogether more difficult, but, just as a significant body of hypothetical universalists successfully influenced the final wording at Dordt, so too at the Westminster Assembly do we meet with a vocal minority who were able to restrain the final codification sufficiently for there to be some significant ambiguity at crucial places. This may come as a surprise to many, because it is quite clear that the Westminster Standards not only do not teach English Hypothetical Universalism or allow it to be deduced or expounded by logical deduction from various propositional statements made, but the whole exegetical approach and systematic structures of the finally codified Westminster theology are inimical to it.¹⁰³ But that should not take away from the fact that the Westminster Assembly was far from unanimous on the issue of the extent of the atonement, and the vocal and influential English Hypothetical Universalist minority pushed hard so as not to be needless ly excluded from orthodoxy at any crucial point.

And neither was the Assembly unwilling to comply. There is no evidence to suggest that the Assembly excluded views unnecessarily just because it could. Indeed, to have done so would have been strategically disastrous for this parliamentary committee, as well as against the stated will of some of its leading divines. For example, on the Fast Day of 8 October, 1645, days before the extent of the atonement was debated at the Westminster Assembly, Edward Reynolds preached a sermon to the Assembly in which he exhorted the divines to self-denial in relation to the Assembly, including in the matter of expressing their “judgments and opinions” when these threatened “to hinder the peace of the church.” Reynolds feared that a “divided ministry” would only serve as “an advantage for the common enemy.¹⁰⁴ By ‘common enemy’ Reynolds would have included Papists, Anabaptists, Arminians and the like, but not– despite his own particular redemptionist convictions–English Hypothetical Universalists. The printed edition of this sermon “Published by Authority” indicates that what Reynolds had in mind by judgments and opinions that needed to be suppressed for the sake of unity were those that were “not in themselves matters of faith and morall duty” but rather “matters meerly problematicall, and of private perswasion, wherein godly men may be differently minded, without breach of love, or hazard of salvation.”¹⁰⁵ Reynolds’ spirit here is not out of keeping with the fact that although the Westminster Confession goes way beyond Dordt’s calculated ambiguity in the direction of a much more defensive particularism, it too also falls short of explicitly proscribing English Hypothetical Universalism where, in theory, it could have done so.

An exhaustive investigation of this complicated matter is beyond the scope of this essay, but one example of this falling short would arguably be Chapter 3 of the Confession concerning “Gods eternall Decree”. This chapter was debated at length during the Assembly in the autumn of 1645, following the report of the first Committee concerning predestination on Friday, 17 October. It is significant, given his irenicism above, that Reynolds himself was in charge of this committee.¹⁰⁶ A surviving comment from Scots Commissioner George Gillespie on the opening session of the debate on the following Monday also gives an indication of the spirit in which its predestinarian statements were drawn up. Gillespie advocated studied ambiguity in the confession at this point “soe every one may injoy his owne sence.”‘¹⁰⁷ Two days later, as the debate continued, the boundaries of Gillespie’s commitment to studied ambiguity were to be put to the test as the debate moved towards the relationship between the decree of election and the redemption of Christ. Gillespie, along with Samuel Rutherford, John Lightfoot, Thomas Goodwin, Anthony Burgess and various other particular redemptionists, locked horns with the English Hypothetical Universalists Edmund Calamy, Lazarus Seaman, Stephen Marshall and Richard Vines for extensive debates on whether “Christ did intend to Redeeme the elect only.”¹⁰⁸ The extent of the atonement was debated at length for the rest of the week and rolled on into a second week of debates, with the “debate about Redemption” still appearing in the Minutes as late as 31 October. By this stage some level of agreement appears to have been reached, for discussion then proceeded to the doctrine of reprobation. But just what was this agreement, and to what extent could ‘everyone enjoy their own sense’?

WCF 3.6 reads:

Wherefore they who are elected, being fallen in Adam, are redeemed by Christ, are effectually called unto faith in Christ, by his Spirit working in due season, arc justified , adopted, sanctified, and kept by his power through faith unto salvation. Neither are any other redeemed by Christ, effectually called, justified, adopted, sanctified and saved, but the Elect only.”¹⁰⁹

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Moore:

6.4.1 The Canons of Dordt

In the case of the Canons of Dordt, modifications deriving from a substantial minority influence are exactly what we find.⁹² It might at first be thought out of place in an essay on diversity in the British Reformed tradition to trespass into a consideration of the position on this controversy taken by the Synod of Dordt. That would doubtless have been the case had it not been for the fact that a highly significant part of this minority influence at the Synod came from the British Delegation, and the most influential among its five delegates was none other than John Davenant.⁹³ Like the Synod itself, the British Delegation was by no means unanimous on the extent of the atonement, and the influence of particular redemptionist impulses was felt, initially at least, from three delegates within the British ranks.⁹⁴ Tales of the ‘conversion’ of British delegates from particularism to hypothetical universalism under the influence of Davenant and  the other convinced hypothetical universalist delegate Samuel Ward (1572-1643) are not implausible, but hard to verify. But certainly ground was conceded to Davenant and Ward either reluctantly and for tactical reasons, or otherwise.⁹⁵ Due to the towering influence of Davenant and his close friend Ward, it was the position of English Hypothetical Universalism that was brought to bear powerfully upon the deliberations and final formulations of the Synod to the extent that the British Delegation were able to subscribe to the resulting Canons shortly before returning to England.⁹⁶

In subscribing to the Canons, the British Delegation affirmed the following in Article 2.8: “voluit Deus, ut Christus per sanguinem crucis (quo novum foedus confirmavit) ex omni populo, tribu, gente, et lingua, eos omnes et solos, qui ab aetemo ad salutem electi, et a Patre ipsi dati sunt, efficaciter redimeret.”⁹⁷ But how exactly could a theologian such as John Davenant subscribe to this? At first glance the terms efficaciter (‘effectually’ or ‘efficaciously’) and eos solos (‘those only’) appear to shut up the would-be subscriber to a particularist understanding of the death of Christ, as if Christ died to save “only” the elect. This explains why in the twentieth century this second Article of the Canons was to form the ‘L’ for ‘Limited Atonement’ in the popular ‘T.U.L.I.P.’ acronym for the so-called ‘Five Points of Calvinism’.⁹⁸ But ironically it is the inclusion of the word efficaciter that gives the hypothetical universalist room for his position. Had this word been omitted, the Canons would be teaching that Christ’s redemptive work in all respects was “only” for the elect But as it stands, what the Canons teach here is that Christ’s effectual redemptive work was “only” for the elect. This leaves a door open–even if it is only a back door–for any subscriber to hold privately to an ineffectual redemptive work for the nonelect, or, to put it differently, Christ dying for the non-elect sufficiently but not efficiently–precisely what a hypothetical universalist usage of the Lombardian formula entailed.

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Hypothetical Universalism, Amyraldianism, Amyraut, and Testard

1. Amyraut on the ordering of the decrees
2. Amyraut affirms the classic Lombardian distinctions
3. Testard affirms the classic Lombardian distinctions (by way of Donald Grohman)
4. The “Preface” to the Formula Consensus Helvetica: Amyraut, Placaeus, and Daillé, as Fraternal Brothers in the Body of Christ
5. Theophilus Gale (1628-1678) on Davenant and Amyraut
6. Peter van Mastricht (1630-1706) on Cameron and Amyraut as “Reformed” and “Orthodox” (Informal References)
7. John Cameron (1579-1625) and Festus Hommius (1576-1642): The Synod of Dort and Regeneration
8. Philip Schaff (1819-1893) on John Henry Heidegger on Amyraldianism: Disapproved Of, But Not Heresy
9. Laurence Proctor on Amyraut’s “Christ Died Equally For All”
10. Donald Grohman on Turretin on Amyraut as Reformed
11. Richard Muller on Amyraut
12. Richard Muller on Non-Amyraldian Precedents to Hypothetical Universalism
13. Richard Muller on Hypothetical Universalism and the Reformed Tradition
14. Carl R. Trueman on Amyraldianism
15. Benjamin Inman on Turretin on Amyraldianism
16. Aaron C. Denlinger on Robert Baron (c. 1596-1639), Hypothetical Universalism, and Reformed Orthodoxy