Having set forth the orthodox teaching, the Synod rejects the errors of those:

IV Who teach that what is involved in the new covenant of grace which God the Father made with men through the intervening of Christ’s death is not that we are justified before God and saved through faith, insofar as it accepts Christ’s merit, but rather that God, having withdrawn his demand for perfect obedience to the law, counts faith itself, and the imperfect obedience of faith, as perfect obedience to the law, and graciously looks upon this as worthy of the reward of eternal life.

For they contradict Scripture: “They are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Jesus Christ, whom God presented as a sacrifice of atonement, through faith in his blood” (Rom. 3:24–25). And along with the ungodly Socinus, they introduce a new and foreign justification of man before God, against the consensus of the whole church.

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Because of the use of biblical terminology it is easy to miss the fact that the Arminian view of the justice of God and the nature of the atonement inevitably distorts the biblical doctrine of justification by grace alone, through faith alone, on account of Christ alone as confessed by the Reformed churches.

The Arminian does so by defining justification in such a way that the biblical ground of our justification (the imputed righteousness of Christ) is transformed into a doctrine of human merit. This can be confusing because Arminians do indeed use the biblical language of forgiveness, imputation, and “faith alone.” But all of these terms are redefined in a manner which does not comport with the biblical usage of these words, nor with the doctrine of the Reformers.

According to the Arminian system, justification should be understood as follows. Due to Adam’s fall all men and women have a universal tendency toward sinfulness. But the death of Christ secures a prevenient grace for all men and women, which enables people to use their free-will to seek after God and righteousness, and then come to Jesus Christ through faith. Since God has arbitrarily decided that he will regard the blood of a sacrificial victim as a sufficient demonstration of his love and justice (thereby allowing him to remit sin), he has also determined that when someone exercises faith in Christ, God will arbitrarily regard the personal exercise of faith as though it were righteousness.

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Having set forth the orthodox teaching concerning election and reprobation, the Synod rejects the errors of those . . .

III. Who teach that God’s good pleasure and purpose, which Scripture mentions in its teaching of election, does not involve God’s choosing certain particular people rather than others, but involves God’s choosing, out of all possible conditions (including the works of the law) or out of the whole order of things, the intrinsically unworthy act of faith, as well as the imperfect obedience of faith, to be a condition of salvation; and it involves his graciously wishing to count this as perfect obedience and to look upon it as worthy of the reward of eternal life.

For by this pernicious error the good pleasure of God and the merit of Christ are robbed of their effectiveness and people are drawn away, by unprofitable inquiries, from the truth of undeserved justification and from the simplicity of the Scriptures. It also gives the lie to these words of the apostle: “God called us with a holy calling, not in virtue of works, but in virtue of his own purpose and the grace which was given to us in Christ Jesus before the beginning of time” (2 Tim. 1:9).

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This particular Arminian error may be the most pernicious, since at first glance. it appears to come close to the truth, but nevertheless bases the ground of our salvation upon an act of the creature, not in the decree of God and the merits of Christ. This argument is often presented by more capable Arminian theologians.

In this instance, the Synod of Dort rejects the error of those who argue that God determines the way of salvation (faith in Christ, not good works), but at the same time also contend that God’s purpose does not involve the election of specific individuals who are to be saved. God’s purpose in election is limited to determining how people are to be saved, not who will be saved. To put the matter another way, God chooses a method of salvation, not the individuals whom he will save.

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