What makes a Calvinist a Calvinist is their emphasis on unconditional election.
You might say that the Calvinists, by making it the central issue of salvation, left the Reformed school, and Arminius was saying that it was the Calvinists who were outside the sphere of Reformed theology, not the other way around.
Since when is truth determined by FEELINGS ?
Feelings are not evidence of anything .Remember this? "Not everyone who says to Me, 'Lord, Lord,' shall enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of My Father in heaven. Many will say to Me in that day, 'Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in Your name, cast out demons in Your name, and done many wonders in Your name? 'And then I will declare to them, 'I never knew you; depart from Me, you who practice lawlessness!"
That guy FELT he was saved
Joseph Smith felt he was a prophet of god ..
The truth of that mans doctrine is not what HE FELT, it is what he believed... and he did not believe the doctrines of grace as taught by the Reformation
***we can say with assurance that he never felt he was outside the group.***
Well, zip-i-de-do-da or however you spell it. Would you feel more sure that Arminius was not a part of the Reformed "in crowd" if the church would have sent him off with a nice heart felt bonfire instead of letting the sneak die naturally?
Christian.
I agree that Arminius always felt himself to be within the Reformed confessions.
That was what he was arguing for, to bring the Reformed back to the Bible, and not be defined by Calvin's Institutes (BK3).
The term 'Reformed' is used to distiquish the Calvinistic from the Lutheran and Anabaptist traditions. The Reformed traditions finds it roots in the theology of Ulrich Zwingli, the first reformer in Zurich, and John Calvin of Geneva,....( Concise Evangelical Dictionary of Theology, p.423)
Vance writes (quoting Bangs in his work on Arminius) that Arminius deserves to be classified as an orthodox Dutch Reformed theologian.(p.131, Other Side of Calvinism)