3. Amyraldianism: the debate that never died
Amyraldianism: the debate that never died The Reformed world was to be more convulsed by Amyraldianism than it had ever been by Arminianism. This was because Arminians could fairly easily be identified as holding views incompatible with Reformed theology.
It was much harder to make that charge stick against Amyraldians, who claimed to be just as Reformed as their critics—perhaps more Reformed.
Some of the most formidable opponents of the Amyraldians admitted that despite their errors, they were Reformed men. Francis Turretin, for instance, the trumpet of Reformed Orthodoxy in Geneva (see section 1.8), consistently recognized Amyraldians as Reformed thinkers, even while disagreeing vehemently with their views. As a quarrel within the Reformed family, therefore, the Amyraldian controversy was more deeply troubling than Arminianism. It involved the question of what it really meant to hold a Reformed theology—especially whether John Calvin himself would have approved of the way his tradition had developed.
1. The life and work of Moise Amyraut Amyraldianism took its name from the French theologian Moise Amyraut
(1596–1664); his last name was Latinized as Amyraldus. He was born to a Huguenot family at Bourgueil in the west of France. The Huguenots—the French Calvinists—were a tolerated minority in Catholic France, with religious freedoms legally guaranteed in the famous Edict of Nantes (1598), which had effectively ended the long Catholic-Huguenot civil war, so devastating to France in the latter part of the 16th century. In Amyraut's youth, the French government under Cardinal Richelieu destroyed the remaining political and military power of the Huguenots in a war of 1627–8
(see Chapter 6, section 1). The French Reformed community was now unable to defend itself against aggression by a Catholic state, if the latter should ever decide to revoke their religious liberties (see section 5 of Chapter 7).
We know little of Amyraut's family or childhood. We do know that after studying law, Amyraut's reading of Calvin's Institutes inspired him to go to the Huguenot theology academy at Saumur, near his birthplace, around
1618. Here he was deeply influenced by the Scottish theologian John Cameron (1579–1625), who had himself only just arrived to teach at Saumur. Born in Glasgow, and trained theologically in its university,
Cameron spent most of his life in France among the Huguenots. He was copastor of a Huguenot church at Bordeaux from 1608, and then moved to Saumur academy in 1618. Since Amyraut's theology so closely mirrored
Cameron's, we will not give a separate account of Cameron's theology; in looking at the views of his French disciple, we will see what the Scot believed. Cameron left France in 1621 owing to political difficulties, and taught theology in London for some time, before being appointed principal of Glasgow University by King James I in 1622. However, he returned to France in 1623 to lecture in the Huguenot academy at Montauban. Here he was killed in 1625 by a mob—ironically a Huguenot mob. It seems they objected to Cameron's strong views on the duty of obedience to kings. This was a bitterly controversial belief among the highly politicized Huguenots of that era, with their tendency to constant rebellion against the French crown (a tendency that Cardinal Richelieu was about to crush decisively in the 1627–8 war).
After his studies at Saumur academy, Amyraut became pastor of Saumur's Huguenot congregation in 1626. Soon after, he began lecturing on theology in the academy, part-time at first, but full-time from 1631 (without relinquishing his pastorate). He also helped to supervise publication of the works of his mentor, John Cameron. A memorable encounter with the French court in 1631 throws some light on Amyraut's character. Every year the Huguenots sent one of their number to report to the king any infringements of the 1598 edict of Nantes, which had given them religious liberty. That year Amyraut was selected. However, he refused to kneel in the presence of King Louis XIII; Amyraut saw this as discrimination against Protestants, since Roman Catholic clergy were allowed to remain standing.
For 15 days the offended king refused to see Amyraut unless he would kneel; Amyraut persisted in his objection. Finally the king's all-powerful chief minister, Cardinal Richelieu, visited the stubborn Huguenot pastor to persuade him to kneel. But Amyraut displayed such a combination of courtesy and resolve that Richelieu was won over, and Amyraut was allowed to remain standing in the royal presence.
By 1634, Amyraut was becoming well-known among French Protestants as a distinguished theologian. That year, however, he published a treatise which landed like a bomb on the playground of the theologians.29 It was his
Brief Treatise on Predestination and its Dependent Principles. From the moment it hit the bookshops, Amyraut's life became one long controversy.
A contemporary Huguenot historian, Pierre Bayle (1647–1706), described the subsequent years as "a kind of civil war among the Protestant theologians of France". The war extended beyond France, as we shall see.
2. Amyraut's theology What ignited the fires was Amyraut's way of countering the view— attributed to Reformed theology by its foes, and possibly held by supralapsarians30—that God had created a great portion of humankind (the non-elect) for the sole and express purpose of damning them. Many French
Catholics thought that the Calvinist God was a capricious, unjust, and unloving tyrant, which (Amyraut felt) hindered their conversion to Reformed truth. Meanwhile some Huguenots were drifting away into Roman Catholicism in order to find a more loving God. Amyraut wanted to rescue the Reformed doctrine of predestination from this caricature, as he considered it.
His rescue method was to argue, in effect, that election should be viewed in the light of the cross of Christ, not the cross in the light of election.
According to Amyraut, the moving cause behind the coming of Christ was God's love for the whole human race without any limitations. The salvation
Christ procured for humanity, however, must be received personally through faith; as Amyraut put it, God had decreed a universal scope to Christ's death, but made its effect conditional on faith. Such faith, unfortunately, was beyond the power of the fallen human will. Election therefore was God's sovereign decision to give faith efficaciously to some sinners, in order that Christ's universal mission might bear at least some fruit among humankind. In this way, Amyraut believed he had woven together God's general love for humanity, the universal applicability of Christ's atoning death, and divine sovereignty in personal salvation, in a tapestry more Biblical, more evangelistically preachable, and more faithful to Calvin, than what was commonly found in the Reformed theology of the day. Amyraut's system became known as "hypothetical universalism", from its synthesis of an unlimited scope to Christ's death (the "universal" aspect) and its effect being conditional on faith (the "hypothetical" aspect).
Amyraut was in reality arguing both with supralapsarians and infralapsarians over the logical order in God's decrees (see section 1, under Theodore Beza). Although Amyraut sometimes preferred not to divide
God's decree into any kind of inner sequence, but leave it simply as a single unified purpose, at other times he was prepared to suggest an order of decrees, perhaps as a concession to the human mind's desire for clarity of explanation. We could express Amyraut's view thus:
Amyraldian order of decrees God decrees to create humanity.
He decrees to permit the fall.
He decrees the mission of Christ to save humanity, its effect conditional on faith.
He decrees to give faith to some (election), so that Christ's mission will bear some fruit.
Another facet of Amyraut's theology that attracted criticism was his distinction between natural ability and moral ability. He argued that in spite of sin, fallen sinners have a natural ability to believe the Gospel for their salvation—otherwise how could God require them to believe, and hold them blameworthy for not believing? By "natural ability", Amyraut meant all the mental equipment necessary to perform the act of believing. A human was not the same as (say) a tree-stump. A tree-stump has a natural inability to believe: it lacks the mental equipment. A human being is not in that category. Amyraut maintained that human "inability" to believe is spiritual, not natural, in origin: not the lack of the necessary mental equipment, but a voluntary aversion to using it aright. He accepted that efficacious divine grace alone could overcome that aversion. His opponents, however, felt he had diluted the Reformed view of the sinner's inability.
Was human nature not corrupted by sin? How then could human inability fail to be an inability of nature—a natural inability? Was Amyraut's distinction not simply a crafty backdoor to Arminianism?31
Amyraut's sources for his theology (other than his own meditations on the Bible) were supremely John Calvin himself and John Cameron. There would be bitter disputing about Amyraut's fidelity to the Bible and Calvin; there could be none about his fidelity to Cameron. Amyraldianism might just as well be called Cameronianism. Another debate, ongoing among scholars, is whether Amyraut's view should be seen as expressing a strand of thought that had always been present in the Reformed tradition, from Heinrich Bullinger onwards. Was he an innovator, or was he giving fresh voice to a genuine aspect of Reformed thinking from its very origins?32
Other treatises by Amyraut followed, in which he defended and elaborated his views: Six Sermons on the Nature of the Gospel (1636),
Sample of Calvin's Doctrine (1636), The Doctrine of John Calvin on the Absolute Decree of Reprobation Defended (1641), Four Dissertations
(1645), A Declaration of the Faith of Moise Amyraut concerning the Errors of the Arminians (1646), Disputation on Free Will (1647)…. And even
more. In all, Amyraut wrote 90 works. Not all were connected with the controversy over his views on grace. For instance, he penned treatises on the Trinity, the Lord's Supper, Christian ethics, and apologetics. Despite his immersion in theological controversy within the Reformed family, Amyraut was firmly committed to ecumenical unity among all Protestants; he had a special regard for Lutherans, and played a part in the French Reformed
Church's decision in 1631 to allow Lutherans to sit at the Lord's Table in Huguenot congregations.
3. Foes and friends Amyraut's Reformed critics were many and formidable. They especially objected to his formula that Christ died for all on condition that they believe. Such conditionality, they felt, was inconsistent with God's sovereignty. In France, Amyraut's most vehement adversary was Pierre du
Moulin (1568–1658). A marvel of learning, du Moulin had studied theology at Cambridge University under the famous William Whitaker.33 Cambridge later awarded him a Doctorate in Divinity. After teaching theology for six years in the Dutch university of Leyden, du Moulin returned to France in 1599 to pastor the enormous Huguenot congregation in Charenton, near
Paris. When Catholic Paris became too dangerous for an outspoken Protestant preacher, he relocated in 1621 to Sedan in the Ardennes, where he pastored another church and taught theology at Sedan's Huguenot academy. He spent most of the remainder of his life there.
From 1634, that life was consumed by literary warfare with Amyraut, whom du Moulin portrayed as a crypto-Arminian. Indeed, the shadow of Arminianism loomed large over the whole Amyraldian controversy. Du
Moulin had been instrumental in getting the French Reformed Church to adopt the canons of Dort in 1620. Now he and others feared that Amyraut and his supporters would bring into France the kind of turmoil the Remonstrants had provoked in the Dutch Republic. The accusation of crypto-Arminianism was unfair; although Amyraut shared some Arminian criticisms of supralapsarian Calvinism, he was a different type of man and thinker from Arminius, and Amyraldianism was a different system of thought from Arminianism. But in historical context, one can well understand the anxiety of du Moulin and others. Their suspicions were further kindled by the leniency of the Huguenot churches in the Paris district (where Amyraldian sympathies were strong) toward Dutch
Arminian expatriates who wished to join their ranks. It enraged antiAmyraldians even more when Amyraldians nonchalantly swore their allegiance to the canons of Dort!
Another prominent Huguenot critic was André Rivet (1572–1651), otherwise known by his Latinized name Rivetus, who spent much of his career teaching theology in Leyden University. His 1625 work, the Synopsis of a Purer Theology, was an exhaustive systematic theology textbook, widely used throughout the Reformed world. Rivet was du Moulin's
brother-in-law, and he had been a friend of Amyraut before going into print against him. His criticisms, however, were expressed much more mildly, and with greater clarity and precision, than du Moulin's thunder and lightning. Samuel des Marets (1599–1673) (Latinized as Maresius) was another distinguished French Reformed theologian who entered the arena against Amyraut.34 From 1643, he pastored a church in the Dutch city of Groningen; his System of Theology (1645) was another popular textbook.
The fact that Rivet's and des Marets' opposition to Amyraut emanated from the Dutch Republic shows how the controversy spilled outside
France's borders. Rivet and des Marets, however, were still French. Other outstanding Reformed theologians of different nationalities who wrote against Amyraut included the German Friedrich Spanheim (1600–49), from the Palatinate, who taught at Geneva and Leyden, the Swiss divines
Johann Heidegger of Zurich and Francis Turretin of Geneva (see section 1), and the English Puritan John Owen (1616–83) in his most famous treatise,
The Death of Death in the Death of Christ (1648), where Owen critiques Amyraut among others for his view on the extent of the atonement.35
Geneva took particularly strong action, effectively banning all Amyraldians from taking up any pastoral or teaching position in the city.
However, Amyraut had many supporters. In the French Reformed Church, his chief defenders were the two illustrious divines, Jean Daillé
(1594–1670) and David Blondel (1590–1655). Daillé was pastor of the Huguenot congregation at Charenton—ironically, the same church that had previously been pastored by Amyraut's arch-enemy du Moulin. A formidable scholar, Daillé's Treatise on the Use of the Holy Fathers for Judging Current Religious Differences (1632) and Apology for the Reformed Churches (1633) were internationally renowned masterpieces of controversy against Roman Catholic claims, while many of his sermons were published as valued commentaries, especially on Paul's letters.
Blondel was pastor of the Huguenot congregation at Roucy from 1630, then professor of church history at the Athenaeum Illustre in Amsterdam (the forerunner of Amsterdam University) in the Dutch Republic from 1650; he was the Huguenots' church historian par excellence. His most important works (like Daillé's) were anti-Roman Catholic: On Primacy in the Church
(1641), Apology for the Opinion of Jerome on Presbyters and Bishops (1646), and supremely Pseudo-Isidore (1628) which exposed the medieval
Isidorian Decretals as a forgery.36 Both Daillé and Blondel were powerful allies of Amyraut and exponents of his theology.
Another supporter was Louis Cappel (1585–1658) who taught alongside Amyraut at Saumur. Cappel was above all a Hebrew scholar, and his main work lay not in the Amyraldian debate but in textual scholarship. He stirred up fierce controversy against himself by marshalling his formidable learning to attack the (then widespread) belief that the vowel points in the Hebrew Masoretic text of the Old Testament were divinely inspired.
Modern biblical scholarship of all shades is virtually unanimous that Cappel was correct, but in his own day he was perceived as overthrowing the inspiration of Scripture. Perhaps it did not help Amyraut that Cappel, himself suspect for his orthodoxy (albeit unjustly, in retrospect), stood by him.
Amyraut found supporters in other countries too. English Calvinism seemed to produce a fairly rich crop of Amyraldians or sympathizers who constructed similar outlooks: Stephen Marshall (c.1594–1655), Richard
Vines (1600–56), Edmund Calamy (1600–66), John Arrowsmith (1602–59), John Howe (1630–1705), Lazarus Seaman (d.1675), and Richard Baxter
(1615–91), to name some of the most influential.37 Some of these had probably embraced a form of universal atonement before Amyraut's controversial treatise exploded on the scene in 1634; the influence has been detected here of Bishop John Davenant of Salisbury, one of the English delegates to the Synod of Dort (see previous section for the Synod and Davenant's presence). In other words, if we go by chronology, Amyraut was a Davenantian rather than Davenant an Amyraldian. Davenant's
"Amyraldianism" was classically expressed in his Dissertation on the Death of Christ, as to its Extent and Special Benefits, published posthumously in 1650. The Dissertation seems originally to have been given as lectures at Cambridge University, where Davenant was Lady
Margaret Professor of Divinity from 1609 to 1621.
Another probable influence on the English was John Preston (1587– 1628), a moderate Calvinist, Master of the Puritan Emmanuel College and preacher to the lawyers of Lincoln's Inn. Preston pioneered the evangelistic formula "Christ is dead for you" as consistent with a Reformed view of the relationship between the atonement and divine sovereignty. The formula would be popularized by the celebrated Marrow of Modern Divinity (1645), probably by the Presbyterian lay theologian Edward Fisher. The Marrow
was destined for equal amounts of fame and controversy in 18th century Scotland, where it was republished in 1718, its admirers gaining the nickname "Marrowmen".
English "Amyraldianism" may therefore not have been the exclusive product of Amyraut's influence, but more a case of a native English tradition of moderate Calvinism, articulated by men like Davenant and Preston, creating a ready audience for Amyraut's ideas.
4. The controversy and its outcomes The French Reformed national synod held at Alençon in 1637 officially investigated the views of Amyraut and another Huguenot pastor, Paul
Testard (1599–1650) of Blois, who had published a treatise entitled Peace Proposal, or Synopsis of the Doctrine of Nature and Grace (1633). Testard, like Amyraut, was a theological disciple of John Cameron. Du Moulin and Rivet sent lengthy submissions to the synod, condemning Amyraut's and Testard's theology. Indeed, the adversaries of Amyraldianism had been very active in preparing for the synod, mobilizing support and quite probably expecting to see Amyraut and Testard overwhelmingly condemned. The synod president was anti-Amyraldian and opened proceedings with a sermon on 2 Corinthians 11:3: "I fear that as the serpent deceived Eve by his subtlety, so your minds may be led away from the simplicity that is in Christ." It seemed obvious that the president was casting Amyraut and Testard in the joint-role of the serpent! The synod took the charges against the two men very seriously, and there was detailed discussion of the disputed views; both Amyraut and Testard explained their beliefs, answered questions, and affirmed their allegiance to the canons of Dort. Ultimately the synod exonerated both men of any doctrinal errors, although it did caution them against using certain phrases (like "conditional decrees") liable to misunderstanding.
It was an astonishing victory for Amyraut and Testard, which historians have struggled to explain. Why did all the anti-Amyraldian opposition, with its widespread support and well-organized preparations, turn into such a spectacular flop at the synod? Three reasons have been suggested. First, much of the theological opposition to Amyraut had come from outside
France; deluged with these complaints at the synod, many patriotic delegates may have felt that foreigners were ganging up on a Frenchman—
Amyraut was nothing if not typically and classically French in his personality and manner. Second, when actually confronted by the possible consequences of a decision against Amyraut, delegates may have recoiled through a fear that it would produce a schism in the French Reformed
Church. In the aftermath of Cardinal Richelieu's annihilation of Huguenot political and military power in 1627–8, French Calvinists probably felt they could ill afford a division in their ranks. Unity prevailed. Third, no one had expected Amyraut and Testard to perform so impressively at the synod.
They were eloquent, sincere, convincing. It looked as though their critics had caricatured them: could these really be the bogey-men of heresy they had been made out to be? Putting these three reasons together, perhaps we can begin to understand Amyraut's and Testard's acquittal.
After seven years of peace, the controversy erupted again in 1644, when the German theologian Friedrich Spanheim, now teaching at Leyden in the Dutch Republic, published a disputation against "universal grace". Amyraut believed himself to be the object of Spanheim's criticisms, and published a response. This exchange once again unloosed the storms of contention, with vehement treatises flying back and forth from various authors for the next four years. This was the controversy that ruptured the friendship between Amyraut and Rivet; an anti-Amyraldian treatise by Rivet somehow found its way to England's Westminster Assembly of divines, which Amyraut interpreted as Rivet stabbing him in the back, trying to persuade an English synod to condemn him when a French synod had acquitted him.38
Spanheim proved a more bitter foe to Amyraut than anyone in France; not content with damning the Frenchman's theology as riddled with absurd errors, he devoted some time to proving that Amyraut wrote the most atrocious Latin.
Amyraut himself was once again put on trial, this time by the synod of Charenton which met from December 1644 to January 1645. Once again he was acquitted. However, another theologian at the Saumur academy, Josué de la Place (1596–1655 or 1665), was condemned—or at least his theology was (he was not named in the condemnation). The synod rejected de la
Place's understanding of original sin. De la Place held that Adam's act of sin in Eden was not imputed to all humanity, but that his consequent depravity was inherited by all on the principle that "like begets like". To evade the condemnation, de la Place later expressed a view known as "mediate imputation"—that Adam's sin is imputed only via the medium of the inherited corruption. This can be found in his 1655 treatise On the Imputation of Adam's First Sin.39
With more and more pastors and divines drawn into the latest fray, it soon began to look like the "civil war among Protestant theologians" described in retrospect by Pierre Bayle. After four years of public acrimony, a top-ranking Huguenot nobleman intervened—Henri-Charles de la
Tremoille, Duke of Thouars and Prince of Tarante. He managed to get some of the disputants together on his estate in October 1649, and persuaded
them to cease from their public polemics, so damaging to the unity and morale of French Protestantism. Thus by aristocratic authority, peace broke out; the theologians sheathed their swords.
Peace, however, proved short-lived, and the conflict blazed afresh in 1655. This time it was owing to Amyraut's supporters, David Blondel and Jean Daillé. Blondel published a historical account of the controversy— which merely reignited the controversy, as others disputed his interpretation. Jean Daillé published a huge tome, Apology for the Synods of Alençon and Charenton, which detailed all the theological arguments; it also had a section containing a myriad of quotations, from the early Church fathers up to contemporary Reformed theologians, all allegedly teaching
Amyraut's views or something like them. Once again the literary warfare raged.
By 1659 the latest phase of the controversy had virtually spent itself.
That year, when the French Reformed Church met in synod at Loudun, Jean Daillé was elected its moderator. The synod proceeded to affirm the orthodoxy of both Daillé and Amyraut. It was clear that most French
Calvinists were now happy to accept Amyraldianism as a valid understanding of the Reformed faith: Amyraut had triumphed in the land of his birth. Outside France, however, controversy continued. Perhaps the most calm and clear critique of Amyraldianism was to come from the hugely influential Francis Turretin of Geneva, in his Institutes of Elenctic
Theology (1679–85). Even Turretin was prepared to concede the Reformed status of Amyraut and his supporters, albeit the Genevan believed they had sadly strayed from the purest standards of Reformed Orthodoxy.
In the deepest sense, the Amyraldian controversy never went away.
Reformed theology would continue to struggle with the issues Amyraut had raised, and still struggles today. Arminianism had been cast out at the Synod of Dort, and would never be seen as a legitimate variety of Reformed theology; but whenever there has been any friction over the extent of the atonement and related beliefs in Reformed circles, as there has often been, the spirit of Amyraut has walked anew.