Dordrecht Synod
The Dordrecht Synod was a national ecclesiastical assembly of the Dutch Reformed Church with the participation of foreign Reformed churches, which took place in Dordrecht from November 13, 1618 to May 9, 1619 . The opening and closing sermons were given by the Dordrecht preacher Balthasar Lydius , who was also commissioned to record the negotiations of the synod.
history
The governor Moritz of Orange , at the head of the States General, brought about a final decision on a significant dispute about the Calvinist doctrine of predestination . Moritz of Orange took the side of the contraremonstrants (who were also called Gomarists after the Leiden theologian Franciscus Gomarus ).
As early as the end of the 16th century, some preachers in Delft had come out claiming that divine predestination was performed with regard to the fall of man. The respected theology professor Jakob Arminius went even further in Leiden . He denied absolute predestination and taught predestination based on the foreknowledge of God; Christ died for all people and grace does not work irresistibly. He found numerous like-minded people who were named after him as Arminians; According to the Creed Remonstrance submitted by them to the estates of Holland and West Friesland in 1610, they are also called Remonstrants , their opponents "Gomarists" after Arminius' colleague and main opponent Franz Gomarus.
The aim of the general synod was to resolve these dogmatic issues that were negotiated in 154 sessions. Twenty-eight theologians from England, Scotland, Germany and Switzerland also accepted the invitation to participate in all reformed countries; Brandenburg did not participate and France prohibited the loading.
The remonstrants summoned to responsibility , headed by Simon Episcopius , professor in Leiden, presented the foreign theologians with an apology and defended themselves before the synod, but were expelled at the 57th session after their refusal to submit to its decisions . They were later excommunicated and removed from their ecclesiastical offices. The Heidelberg Catechism , the Dutch Creed and the Confessio Gallicana were unanimously recognized as orthodox creeds and doctrines.
During the discussion of the five disputed articles, the contradiction of the Anglican and German MPs, including in particular Mathias Martinius from Bremen and Georg Cruciger and Rudolph Goclenius from Marburg , prevented any open and clear statement of supralapsarian theses, i.e. the view that God had already determined before the fall of man that a part of the people is rejected, so that finally the synodal canons could only establish an essentially infralapsarian predestination concept, ie the divine predestination is only effective after the fall of man.
The subjects of negotiation included the condemnation of the liberal doctrine of the Remonstrants , the new Dutch translation of the Bible (Dutch: Statenvertaling , state translation ) by Wilhelm Baudaert, among others, and the church ordinance , which later became the Nederlands Hervormde Kerk ( Dutch Reformed Church ). The synods essentially accepted John Calvin's doctrine of predestination .
The resolutions of the synod, the so-called doctrinal rules of Dordrecht , are still important today, not only for the Reformed churches , but also for church history .
literature
- ACTA SYNODALIS NATIONALIS , 1620, in the library holdings Stiftung Buch und Wissen, Essen (Sigel E 16).
- Textbook of church history for students by Joh. Heinr. Kurtz, Leipzig 1906, § 164, 2,3 + 8.
- Bihlmeyer / Tüchle , Church History , reprint as UTB, Paderborn 1996, § 185, 3.
- Johannes Pieter van Dooren: Dordrecht Synod . In: Theologische Realenzyklopädie (TRE). Volume 9, de Gruyter, Berlin / New York 1982, ISBN 3-11-008573-9 , pp. 140-147.
- HC Rogge: Dordrecht, synod to . In: Realencyklopadie for Protestant Theology and Church (RE). 3. Edition. Volume 4, Hinrichs, Leipzig 1898, pp. 798-802.
- Aza Goudriaan / Fred van Lieburg (ed.): Revisiting the Synod of Dordt (1618–1619) (= Brill's series in church history, vol. 49), Leiden / Boston: Brill 2011.
- Fred van Lieburg: The Dordrecht Synod (1618-1619) , transl . Ad Dutch v. Jürgen Beyer (= Verhalen van Dordrecht, vol. 1b), Dordrecht: Historisch Platform Dordrecht 2018.
- Merk (Ed.), The Synod of Dordrecht, 1st edition, Siegen 2019, ISBN 978-3-948475-08-6
Web links
- Leaves in memory of the Dordrecht Synod by Eduard Böhl (PDF file; 417 kB)
Individual evidence
- ^ Jacob Cornelis van Slee : Lydius, Balthasar . In: Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie (ADB). Volume 19, Duncker & Humblot, Leipzig 1884, p. 729 f.
- ↑ Frederik Samuel Knipscheer : Lydius (Balthasar) . In: Petrus Johannes Blok , Philipp Christiaan Molhuysen (Ed.): Nieuw Nederlandsch Biografisch Woordenboek . Part 8. N. Israel, Amsterdam 1974, Sp. 1085-1086 (Dutch, knaw.nl - first edition: AW Sijthoff, Leiden 1930, reprint unchanged).