Theology

In the middle of the seventeenth century the Dutch Reformed church had just recovered from the Arminian Controversy. Assisted by theologians from the principal Reformed churches abroad, the national synod of Dordrecht had clarified Reformed doctrine on the points under discussion between Remonstrants and Counter-Remonstrants. It had expelled the Arminian ministers from the church and thoroughly purged the theological faculty of Leiden, where Jacobus Arminius (1560-1609) had taught his views. The four professors who made up the faculty of theology after the purge published a Synopsis Purioris Theologiae (1625) as a textbook for teaching their students the newly ‘purified’ doctrine, but also to demonstrate their impeccable Dordracene orthodoxy to the world at large and to prospective students in particular. ¹ In 1637 the Statenvertaling was completed, providing the Reformed church with an authoritative text of the Bible, in which marginal annotations directed the reader to an orthodox Reformed reading of the text. When the war with Spain finally ended in 1648 with the Peace of Westphalia, the Reformed church could expect a period of quiet consolidation.