During my freshman year in college I served as a youth director, teaching youth Bible studies and Sunday School and organizing monthly activities. When I met with the pastor at the church to discuss the position, we soon realized that we stood in different places related to Dort — my views would correspond to Dort and his corresponded to the Remonstrants. We still got along. We still ministered together. He stated that although we might have different ways of explaining things, if we encountered a person who did not believe in Jesus, we would encourage them to believe, and if there was a Christian who was stuck in sin, we would exhort them to repent. Although we didn’t discuss this element specifically, it was understood that we would also both say that those who continue in faith are the ones who will be saved at the last day — we just had different explanations of how this perseverance in faith would happen. He(and the Remonstrants) would say it is, in part, through our strength, while Dort explains in Main Point 5 that it is through God’s mercy and grace. In essence, Dort states that perseverance happens because God preserves people.
God Keeps Us
Article 6 of Main Point 5 notes that saints persevere because of God’s mercy and through the work of the Holy Spirit: “For God, who is rich in mercy, according to the unchangeable purpose of election does not take the Holy Spirit from his own completely, even when they fall grievously. Neither does God let them fall down so far that they forfeit the grace of adoption and the state of justification, or commit the sin which leads to death (the sin against the Holy Spirit), and plunge themselves, entirely forsaken by God, into eternal ruin” (5.6). The next article goes on to note that “God preserves in those saints when they fall the imperishable seed from which they have been born again, lest it perish or be dislodged. Secondly, by his Word and Spirit God certainly and effectively renews them to repentance so that they have a heartfelt and godly sorrow for the sins they have committed; seek and obtain, through faith and with a contrite heart, forgiveness in the blood of the Mediator; experience again the grace of a reconciled God; through faith adore God’s mercies; and from then on more eagerly work out their own salvation with fear and trembling.” God works in those whom He chose and saved to bring them to faith, to keep them from falling away, and to bring them to repentance when they sin. Perseverance happens not because of human strength but because of God’s grace, and God uses various means to bring about this repentance and preserve his people: “And, just as it has pleased God to begin this work of grace in us by the proclamation of the gospel, so God preserves, continues, and completes this work by the hearing and reading of the gospel, by meditation on it, by its exhortations, threats, and promises, and also by the use of the sacraments” (5.14).
What’s the Difference?
This view differs from what the Remonstrants taught, as in their view, God’s work is that He “provide[s] believers with sufficient strength to persevere and is ready to preserve this strength in them if they perform their duty, but that even with all those things in place which are necessary to persevere in faith and which God is pleased to use to preserve faith, it still always depends on the choice of human will whether or not to persevere” (Rejection of Errors 5.2). This statement makes it clear that it is up to humans, not up to God: God gives humans a chance, but it is totally up to the human to save themselves by cooperating with God’s grace. Once again, the writers of Dort found this view of the Remonstrants to be Pelagian in nature (see this previous post on what a Pelagian is), outside of the historic teaching of the church (“It is against the enduring consensus of evangelical teaching which takes from humanity all cause for boasting and ascribes the praise for this benefit only to God’s grace.”) and even more importantly, outside of the teaching of Scriptures (“It is also against the testimony of the apostle, ‘It is God who keeps us strong to the end, so that we will be blameless on the day of our Lord Jesus Christ’ [1 Corinthians 1:8].”) (Rejection of Errors 5.2). Earlier, the Canons of Dort noted that if it is up to our strength to preserve, we would fail. “Because of these remnants of sin dwelling in them and also because of the temptations of the world and Satan, those who have been converted could not remain standing in this grace if left to their own resources”(5.3). The Canons of Dort see God as the one keeping us, with Jesus praying in Luke 22:32 and John 17:11, 15 for the faith of his followers to continue. Once again, we see the intent of the writers of the Canons of Dort was not to supplant Scripture or add to it, but rather to explain what they see taught in it.
So What?
In one sense, whether it is God who keeps us by his grace or whether it is through our cooperation does not greatly shift how we approach ministry to people – both sides believe in God’s grace and both sides say you need to continue in faith and would point to the same means (“hearing and reading of the gospel, by meditation on it, by its exhortations, threats, and promises, and also by the use of the sacraments,” see 5.14) to bring about faith and repentance. But in another sense, I do think it makes a difference in terms of how we view God’s power and His grace at work. Ultimately, though, our views should never be shaped on what we feel or what we think works best, but rather on what we see in Scripture – knowing that what we see in Scripture will work and will shape our emotions.
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