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Reconsidering Arminius
Beyond the Reformed and Wesleyan Divide
By Keith D. Stanglin, Mark G. Bilby, Mark H. Mann Abingdon Press
Copyright © 2014 Abingdon Press
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-4267-9654-8
CHAPTER 1
Consecrated through Suffering: The Office of Christ in the Theology of Jacob Arminius
Richard A. Muller
Arminius's Approach to the Office of Christ: Issues and Contexts
The doctrine of Christ's threefold office was not a matter of major debate among Protestant theologians of the early modern era, even though various more or less subordinate topics such as the extent of Christ's satisfaction received intense scrutiny. Although its basic formulation and subsequent prominence as a doctrinal topic in the Loci communes, gathered Disputationes, and theological Institutiones of the era can probably be traced to the final edition of Calvin's Institutes, the concept of Christ's office and even the distribution of the office under the titles of prophet, priest, and king was not original to Calvin and, indeed, had a long history in the thought of the church, extending back as far as Eusebius of Caesarea in the early fourth century. Arminius's doctrine of the threefold office fits well into this post-Reformation development, and it also provides a basis for shedding some light on the perennial question of Armini-us's relationship to the Reformed tradition.
The Office of Christ: Arminius's Basic Assumptions
The Nature of Religion, Covenant, and the Office of Christ
Arminius's understanding of the doctrine of Christ's threefold office was largely uncontroversial. The sole exception is the hint of subordination of the Son to the Father in Arminius's statements concerning the imposition of Christ's office and his consecration to the office, although neither Arminius's oration on Christ's priestly office nor his disputations on the office of Christ caused the debate—nor were they referenced in it. More significant than the potentially controversial element, however, are the connections drawn by Arminius among the fundamental relationship between God and human beings that is constitutive of religion, the foundational identification of true religion as covenantal, and the basic functions of covenantal religion—the kingly, prophetic, and priestly—as adumbrating both the necessity of Christ's mediation and the threefold form of Christ's office as prophet, priest, and king. This rather prominent covenantal aspect of Arminius's Christology is evident both in his Oration on the Priesthood of Christ and in his Public Disputation on Christ's offices. It places him in a significant relation to developments in the Reformed theology of his time, specifically to the development of the doctrine of the pactum salutis or eternal covenant of redemption between the Father and the Son, a relationship noted by William Ames and Herman Witsius, among others.
The oration on Christ's priestly office begins with a set of general observations that Arminius identifies as necessary to the understanding of Christ's office as such and that provide the basis for understanding aspects of the office—notably the kingship and priesthood of Christ. The relationships that subsist between God and human beings all begin with a divine act that involves something bestowed by God and received by human beings. What is also required, however, for there to be a full relationship between God and human beings is human response—specifically an act that has its "beginning" (initium) in human beings and its end in God. The language here reflects the standard definition of religion found in the Protestant theology of Arminius's day, namely, the bond between God and human beings consisting in true knowledge and worship, and Arminius's own summary statement that "religion is the duty of a human being toward God" as defined by God's word and as exercised in worship.
Human beings ought, in other words, to acknowledge the divine act and respond with gratitude. Such gratitude is a debt owed to God, to be paid as demanded and determined by God as the giver of the gift. Yet God has also, in kindness and generosity (benignitas) established this relationship of act and response as a "mutual covenant." The covenant is such that God first manifests God's obligation to humanity before human beings begin to consider themselves as obligated to God.
Here again, in addition to the significant parallels and commonalities between Arminius's thought on covenant and the developing Reformed theologies of his time, we may have a hint of arguments that would later separate Arminius's theology from that of his Reformed colleagues. Where the larger number of Reformed writers would declare that, given both the divine omnipotence and the utter freedom of God in conferring the good being on his creatures, God is under no obligation to creation and certainly does not find God's power limited by the existence of the created order, Arminius disagreed, perhaps reflecting an understanding of the traditional language of "ordained power" (potentia ordinata) and arguing that the act of creating was a self-limiting act and that the divine right over creatures was defined and delimited by the act of creation. The act of creation, in turn, is the basis of God's right to require religion of human beings, and this religion, rightly understood, takes the form of covenant.
Still, Arminius's basic definition of covenant is quite conformable to the Reformed approaches of the era. Arminius argues that all covenants made between God and human beings have two fundamental parts or elements. There is the "prior promise of God, by which [God] obliges himself to perform a duty (officium) and the acts corresponding to it for human beings," and there is the "subsequent prescription of the duty (officium) which is stipulated in return for human beings and through which human beings respond mutually to God." The stipulation or obligation is that those to whom the covenant is proposed become God's people, live according to God's commandments, and expect to receive God's blessings. The divine promise is that God will be both God and king to the people, will properly "discharge the duties" of their king, and will bestow blessings on those who have obeyed the commandments.
Associated with the divine rule, relating to the duties of the king and to the blessings to be bestowed, Arminius continues, are two primary functions belonging to this covenant and required of God's people. One primary function is regal and related to acceptance of supreme authority of God, and the other is religious and concerned with devoted submission to God. Arminius here speaks of the functions belonging to the covenant community and not merely of the divine office or offices. Moreover, given that he has not yet introduced the problem of the fall and that he assumes a prelapsarian as well as a postlapsarian covenant, these religious functions or duties are embedded in the fabric of creation itself. Regal and religious (or priestly) duties arise directly from the covenantal relationship (ex foederatione): Under the regal function, God's people engage in giving thanks and in making requests of the authority; under the religious function, they follow their calling for the sake of sanctification and, constituted as priests of God, perform the services of offering gifts and prayers. Arminius also includes the prophetic function, albeit as a subset of the kingly, given that prophecy is "nothing other than an announcement of the royal will." All three of these functions arise directly out of the covenant. There is also precedent in the religious activities of the ancient patriarchs for the union of the priestly and kingly offices—a union made most clear in the person of Melchizedek.
Arminius is also quite clear in noting the incompleteness and utter insufficiency of the historical enactments of these offices, given the failure of the entire human race in Adam. There was a "constant and perpetual" will of God that religious observance and covenant be maintained. He identifies Adam as "first human being and [first] priest"—and in both capacities the federal representative of the human race. The fall of Adam not only broke covenant with God and left both Adam and his entire progeny locked in sin, but it also defiled religious observance and deprived humanity of the right to proper priestly office. The argument here assumes a significant background in the reading of the Genesis narrative: that Adam was not only the first human being but also the first priest. This relates to the ancient understanding of the trees in the garden as sacramental and as the focal points of religious observance in the original, unfallen economy. Given, moreover, the Pauline Adam-Christ parallel, it was not at all curious for Arminius to develop this point and incorporate it into an argument leading toward the identification of Christ's office, particularly in its priestly aspect, as the necessary fulfillment of God's plan for human religion.
The Imposition of Office
Several issues can be noted here, particularly with reference to the language of "calling" and "imposition." First, when Arminius references Christ's calling to and imposition of the office, he is not making a further Ramistic division of the topic into two distinct acts, calling and imposition. Rather, he is using the two terms as identifications of the same act. Further, Arminius's language has reference to Christ's divine as well as his human nature. In this vein, calling may more clearly reference Christ's humanity. In any case, Arminius consistently references the entire person of Christ, constituted as Mediator, and therefore as both divine and human, considered in the economy of salvation. Even when referring to the roles of the Father and the Son in the constitution of the priestly office, Arminius makes consistent reference to the Son as Christ and Mediator rather than to the Son as second person of the Trinity in eternity.
This language of imposition, moreover, points in two directions. On the one hand, specifically with reference to the imposition of office, Arminius offers a distinctly covenantal reflection in his Oration on the Priesthood of Christ, a reflection that was noted among the Reformed writers of the seventeenth century, notably William Ames, as a significant anticipation of the doctrine of the pactum salutis, or covenant of redemption, that attained prominence among the Reformed beginning in the fourth decade of the seventeenth century. On the other hand, there is a somewhat subordinationist accent in this language of imposition that carried over quite clearly into later Remonstrant theology, notably the theology of Philip van Limborch. Arminius elaborates on these issues in a series of comments on the imposition of Christ's office.
There are three parts to the discussion of the imposition of office, the third of which concerns us here. This third point, the mode of imposition (impositio), enjoining (iniunctio), or undertaking (susceptio), returns Arminius to the issue of covenant, inasmuch as the Levitical priesthood of the Old Testament was imposed by God in the form of a covenant, as described in Malachi 2:5, "My covenant of life and peace is with him" (AT) (Pactum meum est cum illo vitae & pacis). We may hypothesize that Arminius's choice of pactum is explained by the following statement, that the covenant inaugurating the priesthood of Christ was a particular kind of covenant, namely one confirmed by "the taking of an oath" (juramentum).
In any case, Arminius, like a large number of the early modern Reformed writers, argued a special, indeed, a foundational cove-nant relationship between God, specifically God the Father, and Christ as mediator. Also in accord with the general tendency of Reformed thought in his time he identified it as a pactum, not as a foedus. Ames similarly defined Christ's calling (vocatio) to his office as "the action (actio) of God, preeminently of the Father, by which a special covenant (singulari quodam pacto) being inaugurated, the Son was destined to his office."
This covenantal relationship between God the Father and Christ as mediator was clearly of considerable importance to Arminius, inasmuch as he also referenced it in one of his other inaugural orations at Leiden, the Oration on the Object of Theology, and again in one of his Private Disputations. In the Oration on the Object of Theology he argued the necessity of a new and gracious covenant, enabled by the "intervention of a mediator," and he identified Christ as the "appointed" mediator who "obediently undertook the office imposed on him by the Father." A few pages later in the same oration Arminius comments that faith in Christ is necessary not only on the basis of God's decree (ex decreto Dei) but also on the basis of the promise (ex promissione) made by Christ to the Father, specifically on the basis of the covenant (ex pacto) enacted between them. On the part of God the Father, the covenant consisted in the requirement of an act and a promise of reward. On the part of Christ as priest, it consisted in an acceptance of the promise and a further offer or promise to perform the act. As Arminius later indicates, this act would necessarily be "voluntary and pure."
In the Private Disputation, Christ's redemptive work as priest and king is defined as being "constituted" by God and as made effective among human beings through the right performance of religion. As in his Oration on the Priesthood of Christ, Arminius understands religion as covenantal and in the Private Disputations specifically argues that the divine command to worship rightly, as made possible through the work of Christ, is presented as a covenant containing stipulations and promises. These stipulations and promises made between God and believers in their covenant of grace, or "new covenant," reflect what Arminius had also indicated of the covenant or pact between the Father and Christ. In other words, Arminius's understanding of the new covenant rests on his framing of the covenant between the Father and Christ as mediator. Thus, "the stipulation on the part of God and Christ is, that God shall be God and Father in Christ, if in the name, and by the command of God, [a person] acknowledges Christ as his Lord and Savior, that is, if he believes in God through Christ and in Christ, and if he offers love, worship, honor, fear, and complete obedience as prescribed." And,
the promise on the part of God the Father and of Christ, is, that God will be the God and Father, and that Christ, through the administration of his sacerdotal and regal offices, will be the Savior of those who have faith in God the Father and in Christ, and who offer faith and the obedience to God the Father and Christ, that is, he will accept the performance of religious duty, and will reward it.
He approaches the issue from the rather traditionary perspective often followed in Reformed circles of reproducing the basic Anselmic argument for the necessity of a divine-human mediator with minor variation. In short, the high priestly sacrifice required for salvation would necessarily be performed by a single person and, in the form taken by Arminius's argument, the movement from figure or type to full reality required that the same one be "both priest and sacrifice." The priest and the sacrifice would need to be human in order rightly to expiate the sins of human beings, but no human being could possibly perform such an act given the sinfulness of the human race and the inability of sinners to stand before God in any capacity. In the divine wisdom, therefore, the mediator was decreed to be one who would be "born in the likeness of sinful flesh, and yet without sin." The "dignity," however, of such an office was so great that "even man in his pure state" would be incapable of fulfilling the task. "Therefore the Word of God, who from the beginning was with God, and by whom the worlds, and all things visible and invisible, were created, ought himself to be made flesh, to undertake the office of the priesthood, and to offer his own flesh to God as a sacrifice for the life of the world." The person capable of the task, therefore, is "Jesus Christ, Son of God and [son] of man," and it is with Christ that God the Father makes his special covenant of redemption.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Reconsidering Arminius by Keith D. Stanglin, Mark G. Bilby, Mark H. Mann. Copyright © 2014 Abingdon Press. Excerpted by permission of Abingdon Press.
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