The Synod of Dort, the Forms of Unity, and the Gifts of the Holy Spirit

Modern-day Dordrecht - site of the Synod of Dordt

By Robin G. Jordan

I have assembled in this article a number of links to articles on the second Synod of Dort and the Forms of Unity that I thought might interest the readers of Anglicans Ablaze. Representatives of the Church of England would play a role in the formulation of the response to the growth of Arminianism at Dort. The English King James I had urged the convening of the synod. The Reformed doctrine which the Synod of Dort affirmed would in turn reinforce the Reformed doctrine of the Church of England.

The Synod of Dort - Evangelical Times
The Synod of Dort - W. Robert Godfrey
The Belgic Confession - by Cornelis Venema
The Belgic Confession - with Introduction [PDF]
The Canons of Dordt – by R Scott Clark
The Canons of Dort – with Introduction [PDF]
The British Delegation at the Synod of Dort: Assembling and Assembled; Returning and Returned – by Michael Dewar
The English Delegation to The Synod of Dordt – by Mark Shand

The second Synod of Dort was convened to refute the claims of the Dutch Arminians, also known as the Remonstrants. A number of foreign delegations were invited to attend the synod and take part in its deliberations. They included a delegation representing the Church of England, which was considered one of the Reformed Churches of Europe.

With the exception of Article 31 of the Belgic Confession the English delegation took a favorable view of the Belgic Confession which the synod adopted as one of the three Forms of Unity, together with the Heidelberg Catechism and the Canons of Dort. These three documents would shape the Reformed faith not only on the European continent but also in the British Isles, in England and Scotland, for years to come.

While the English delegation was not the strongest delegation at the synod, the participation of the English delegates and their overall favorable view of the three Forms of Unity adopted by the synod affirmed the Church of England’s Reformed theological identity.

Article 31 concerns the ministers of God’s Word and the other Church officers:

We believe, that the ministers of God’s Word, and the elders and deacons, ought to be chosen to their respective offices by a lawful election by the Church, with calling upon the name of the Lord, and in that order which the Word of God teaches. Therefore every one must take heed, not to intrude himself by indecent means, but is bound to wait till it shall please God to call him; that he may have testimony of his calling, and be certain and assured that it is of the Lord.

As for the ministers of God’s Word, they have equally the same power and authority wheresoever they are, as they are all ministers of Christ, the only universal Bishop, and the only Head of the Church.

Moreover, that this holy ordinance of God may not be violated or slighted, we say that every one ought to esteem the ministers of God’s Word, and the elders of the Church, very highly for their work’s sake, and be at peace with them without murmuring, strife or contention, as much as possible.

Among the Reformed Churches the Church of England was the only church to retain the office of bishop. The English delegation believed that the Church of England’s retention of that office was agreeable to the teaching of the Holy Scriptures. While bishops and presbyters were both ministers of God’s Word, they differed in rank and in power and authority. The bishops of the Church of England were nominated by the King as the temporal supreme governor of the Church and elected by the canons of the cathedral of the see for which they had been to nominated bishop. This method of choosing bishops paralleled the Swiss Reformed Church of Zurich’s method of choosing pastors. They were nominated and appointed by the magistrates of the city. It differed from the method by which pastors were nominated and appointed in the Swiss Reformed Church of Geneva and the Dutch Reformed Church.

How the Church should be governed, including how pastors should be appointed, became a major bone of contention during the reign of Charles I. Presbyterian Puritans claimed that a Presbyterian form of church government was the only form of church government ordained by God. Charles I developed a strong dislike for these Puritans who repeatedly pushed for changes in the Church of England’s polity in Parliament and refused his requests for money. He nominated to the office of bishop in the Church of England clergy whose doctrinal views had been influenced by the Arminian Hugo Grotius; who supported his own belief in the divine right of kings; and who shared his taste in church ornaments and worship. Among these nominees was William Laud who replaced the Calvinist George Abbot as the Archbishop of Canterbury. Laud employed harsh measures against the Puritans who opposed his efforts to reform the ornaments and worship of the Church of England in accordance with the King’s and his own preferences, earning their enmity which he would later regret.

Archbishop of Armargh James Usher would propose a compromise in which the bishops and synods of presbyters shared authority in the governance of the church. His proposal came too late. The King and Parliament went to war. Parliament was eventually victorious. Charles I and Archbishop Laud were condemned to death for treason and were beheaded.

Archbishop Usher’s proposal forms the basis of the synodical form of church governance that is found in almost all the provinces of the Anglican Communion and in which bishops share authority with synods of clerical and lay delegates. The only exception is the Anglican Church in North America whose form of church governance is modeled on that of the Roman Catholic Church.

After the restoration of the monarchy and the ascension of Charles II to the English throne the Church of England would retained a robust Reformed wing who defended the Reformed doctrine and principles of the Thirty-Nine Articles of Religion against Arminian interpreters. It is noteworthy that seventeenth century proponents of Latitudinarianism which dominated the Church of England in the eighteenth century sought to revise the Prayer Book to make the Church of England more acceptable to the Non-Conformists (or Dissenters) and to affect their reconciliation with the Church. The Non-Conformists were Reformed in doctrine and were so-called because they refused to conform to the Act of Supremacy of Charles II restoring the Book of Common Prayer.

The Evangelical Revival that swept through the Church of England in the eighteenth century had both an Arminian wing and a Reformed wing. The Arminian wing to a large part split from the Church of England and formed the Methodist Church. The Reformed wing remained within the Church of England. The more conservative evangelicals in the Church of England tend to be Reformed in doctrine but not exclusively so.

While it was at one time claimed that John Wesley had not intended to split from the Church of England but was pressured into leaving, more recent scholarship shows that it was not the case. He had made up his mind well before things came to a head.

Pentecostalism and the charismatic movement have roots in the Holiness movement, which is Wesleyan, or Evangelical Arminian in doctrine. All of these movements share a belief in what is variously described as "Christian holiness", "entire sanctification", "perfect love", the "baptism with the Holy Spirit", the "second work of grace", and the "second blessing.". Lutheran and Reformed Churches reject this belief on the grounds that it is contrary to the doctrine of salvation by grace alone through faith in Christ alone. Both Pentecostalism and the charismatic movement have influenced thinking in the Church of England and other Anglican provinces in recent years. They are a discernible influence in the Anglican Church in North America.

Christians who are Reformed in doctrine for the most part believe that the gifts of the Holy Spirit described in the Acts of the Apostles and Paul’s letters ceased when the apostolic age drew to a close. However, they include in their ranks those who believe that these gifts continue to this day. The latter reject the notion of a second work of grace separate from regeneration, believing that the elect receive the fullness of the Holy Spirit when they are born again. However, they may not experience the fullness of the Holy Spirit for various reasons and later on may experience, as the Spirit works within them, a “release” of the Holy Spirit accompanied by the manifestations of the Spirit described in the Acts of the Apostles and Paul’s letters. The obstacle to their experiencing the fullness of the Holy Spirit may be something as simple as disbelief in such manifestations.

What is the historic Anglican position on the Holy Spirit? This position is staked out in the Forty-Two Articles of Religion of 1553, the predecessor of the Thirty-Nine Articles of Religion of 1571, and in An Homily Concerning the Coming Down of the Holy Ghost for Whitsunday. The Forty-Two Articles in response to the claims of the Anabaptists rejects the notion of private revelations from God superseding God’s revelation of himself in Holy Scriptures.

Article XIX - All Men are Bound to Keep the Moral Commandments of the Law. The Law, which was given from God by Moses, although it binds not Christian men concerning the ceremonies and rites of the same, neither is it required that the civil precepts and orders of it should of necessity be received in any commonwealth, no man, be he never so perfect a Christian, is exempt and loose from the obedience of those commandments which are called moral.

Wherefore they are not to be harkened unto who affirm that Holy Scripture is given only to the weak and do boast themselves continually of the spirit, of whom (they say) they have learned such things as they teach, although the same is most evidently repugnant to the Holy Scripture.[Emphasis added.]

This section was dropped from the Thirty-Nine Articles because personal revelation had ceased to be an issue at the time of their adoption. It is, however, indirectly alluded to in the Thirty-Nine Articles. Personal revelation is also at odds with the principles embodied in the Thirty-Nine Articles.

An Homily Concerning the Coming Down of the Holy Ghost for Whitsunday rejects the idea that the Bishop of Rome (or any other bishop as far as that matters) has a special gift of the Holy Spirit that ordinary Christians do not have. In this regard the homily echoes the Forty-Two Articles’ rejection of those who claim to continually learn from the Holy Spirit albeit their teaching is in conflict with or incompatible to the teaching of the Holy Scriptures. This extends to “sacred tradition” which the Roman Catholic Church claims to be inspired by the Holy Spirit and of which the Pope has historically been the primary interpreter. It is also a rejection of papal infalliability—the belief that the Pope is preserved from the possibility of error as well as excluded from actual error.

An outworking of the teaching of An Homily Concerning the Coming Down of the Holy Ghost for Whitsunday is the rejection of the view that bishops are endued with a special gift of the Holy Spirit that makes them more suited to govern the Church than ordinary Christians. One of the changes that the Restoration bishops made in the Ordinal was to change the formula used at the imposition of hands at ordinations and consecrations to distinguish between the three offices of deacon, presbyter, and bishop. This change was prompted by the claim that no difference existed between the office of presbyter and the office of bishop other than a difference of rank and a difference of authority. They both were essentially the same office. The Restoration bishops asserted that there was also a difference in grace.

However, the New Testament does not distinguish between the two offices using “overseer” and “elder” interchangeably for the same office and does not assign a particular gift set to each office. Since that time two view of the office of bishop have been distinguishable in historic Anglicanism—the “Evangelical” view, that is, the difference between the office of presbyters and that of bishops is chiefly one of rank and authority, and the “Old High Church” view, that is, the difference between the two offices is also one of a particular grace . It must be remembered that the Restoration bishops were for the most part Laudian High Churchmen who not only believed in the divine right of kings but also the divine right of bishops.

An Homily Concerning the Coming Down of the Holy Ghost for Whitsunday does not take the position that the gifts of the Holy Spirit ceased with the conclusion of the apostolic age. This may surprise some readers. Rather they diminished in magnitude. While the Holy Spirit may manifest himself within the believing Christian in the ways that he did in apostolic times, he does not manifest himself with the power or to the extent that he did during apostolic times. The inference is that some of the ways that the Holy Spirit manifest himself in the apostles were for apostolic times only. An example would be inspiring and supervising the writing of what would become Holy Scripture.

The Holy Spirit does not reveal to us new teachings that conflict with what he revealed to the apostles. The Holy Spirit illuminates the apostles’ teachings, sheds light on them, but he does not teach us ideas that contradict them. Here Anglo-Catholic, charismatic, and liberal Anglicans should take note. All three groups of Anglicans claim divine inspiration for their teachings. Historic Anglicanism, on the other hand, views only Holy Scripture as divinely-inspired. It is the scale on which all other teachings must be weighed. It is the touchstone by which they must be tested.

As we have seen the Synod of Dort and the three Forms of Unity adopted by the synod and the Reformed faith defined in these documents are a part of our Anglican heritage. As we have also seen Anglican Reformed doctrine, as articulated in the Forty-Nine Articles and expounded in An Homily Concerning the Coming Down of the Holy Ghost for Whitsunday limit but do not exclude the exercise of the gifts of the Holy Spirit. Christians who place a high value on these manifestations of the Holy Spirit and who are attracted to the Anglican Church do not need to shy away from Anglican Reformed theology out of concern that it is incompatible with this belief. They do not need to cling to Armininan views or embrace unreformed Catholic doctrine and practices.

While the cessionists in the Reformed Churches outnumber the continualists and the more dogmatic cessionists maintain that cessionism is the only acceptable Reformed position, continualism is arguably a legitimate school of thought within Anglican Reformed theology (albeit some theologians might argue that it is really a moderate form of cessionism.) However one may choose to see it, this view does make room for a number of the sign-gifts. At the same time it takes seriously John’s admonition to test the spirits and draws the line at personal or special revelations that conflict with or otherwise are incompatible with the Holy Scriptures.