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The Canons of Dort: A Guide

The Canons of Dort are the theological rules — canons, from the Greek word for a straight rod, and therefore a rule or standard — written at an international gathering of Reformed professors, pastors, elders, and statesmen at the Dutch city of Dordrecht in 1618–19. They were written in response to the struggle, not only within the Dutch Reformed Church but throughout Europe, over the teachings of the pastor-turned-professor Jakob Hermanszoon, whom you know better by his Latinized name: Jacobus Arminius.

They are not the same thing as TULIP. That acronym arrived three centuries later, in another language, and reorders what the Canons actually say. What follows is a guide to the document itself.

G. van Hove's painting "A meeting of the Synod of Dort" (1630)

What are the Canons of Dort?

On May 6, 1619, delegated pastors and professors from across Europe processed through the streets of Dordrecht to the Grote Kerk, the “Great Church.” There the Canons of Dort were read publicly in Dutch for the town and its guests to hear. As each delegate’s name was called, he tipped his hat in assent. Ever since, the Canons have belonged to the confessional heritage of the Dutch Reformed churches.

The document is organized into heads of doctrine. Each point, or “head” (caput), contains several positive articles of what is confessed, and then several rejections of errors. Altogether that comes to fifty-nine positive articles of belief plus thirty-four rejections of errors — ninety-three doctrinal points, resting on something close to 350 supporting passages of Scripture. That is nearly four citations for every paragraph, which is worth holding onto the next time someone tells you the Canons are dry scholasticism.

Together with the Belgic Confession (1561) and the Heidelberg Catechism (1563), the Canons make up what are called the Three Forms of Unity. After the Synod, a Form of Subscription was adopted for ministers, professors, school teachers, elders, and deacons to swear before God that they believed the doctrine of the Confession, Catechism, and Canons is biblical. The churches I serve still require this.

Why was the Synod of Dort called?

The Reformation did not start on October 31, 1517 with Martin Luther, nor did it arrive in the Netherlands on untilled soil. For generations, reforming movements had been calling the church back to the Word. Groups such as the Waldensians and Lollards had fled there, and movements within the Netherlands such as the Brethren of the Common Life encouraged a simple, Scripture-shaped piety. Then came the weight of Empire. Under Philip II of Spain, persecution intensified. Tensions boiled over in 1566 in the beeldenstorm, the wave of public iconoclasm.

At the eye of the storm that followed stood Arminius. Educated at Leiden and then abroad, he had strong Reformed credentials and even a glowing letter of recommendation from his professor at Geneva, Theodore Beza. In 1588 he became a pastor in Amsterdam. Yet as he preached through Romans, concerns began to grow. On Romans 5 he said death was inevitable even if Adam had obeyed the Lord’s command. On Romans 7 he moved away from the Augustinian tradition, suggesting that Paul was speaking of the unregenerate man. Especially on Romans 9, he interpreted “Jacob I loved and Esau I hated” as classes of people, not individuals.

His colleague Franciscus Gomarus came to believe that Arminius’ theology endangered the church’s doctrine of justification by faith alone. If election was grounded in foreseen faith, then faith itself seemed to become a kind of work. Gomarus said he would not dare appear before God’s throne believing what Arminius believed. The issue was no mere academic quarrel. It touched the very question of whether salvation is wholly of grace.

Arminius died in 1609, remembered even by opponents as a humble and godly man, but the controversy did not die with him. In January 1610, forty-three ministers sympathetic to him met in Gouda and issued a five-point document called the Remonstrance, a public protest. From that point on they were known as the Remonstrants. Their opponents replied in 1611 with a Counter-Remonstrance. The conflict spread from lecture halls and consistories into the pews and the streets. Congregations divided. Worshipers moved from church to church to avoid certain preachers. Riots broke out. As the Leiden philosopher Petrus Cunnaeus observed, theologians had introduced this strife into the social media platforms of their day: barbershops, boats, wagons, and theaters. By 1617 and 1618 the Dutch Republic itself was nearing civil conflict, just as the threat of renewed war with Spain loomed.

By the summer of 1617, Prince Maurice had aligned himself with the strict Calvinist party by worshiping with them in The Hague. It’s reported that up to this point Maurice said he didn’t know whether predestination was blue or green, but that he was going to make it orange — the color of his own House of Orange. In response, Johan van Oldenbarnevelt rallied two provinces to declare that no national synod would be held, and had local magistrates raise militias to prevent one. But Maurice proved it’s better to speak softly and carry a big stick. Unlike Oldenbarnevelt, he had a standing army, and it disarmed those militias in July 1618.

Under that pressure, the States General finally called a national synod.

Who was actually at the Synod of Dort?

At the urging of King James I of England, what began as a national synod became an international one. Reformed churches from across Europe were invited to send delegates so that the Dutch churches would not settle this matter in isolation. Invitations went to England, France, Brandenburg, the Palatinate, Hesse, Nassau-Wetterau, Bremen, Emden, Geneva, and several Swiss cantons.

The Synod hosted eighty-four delegates: fifty-eight theologi interi, Dutch and Walloon, and twenty-six theologi exteri, international. They met in the retrofitted kloveniersdoelen, the musketeers’ shooting range. Perhaps the irony didn’t escape them.

King James sent the Synod’s only bishop, George Carleton of Llandaff in Wales, referred to in the notes of the Synod merely as “the Bishop.” Geneva sent Giovanni Diodati, pastor and successor to Beza. From Hesse came the eldest member of the Synod, the seventy-one-year-old Rudolph Goclenius. The French were forbidden by King Louis XIII from attending, and Brandenburg stayed away for fear of damaging its relationship with surrounding Lutheran princes; in their honor an empty set of benches stood alongside the British.

This was no small provincial meeting. It was, as one observer put it, a muster of the forces of Calvinism.

Why are there five points but only four heads of doctrine?

The Canons are structured according to the five points of the Remonstrance of 1610: predestination, satisfaction, corruption, conversion, and preservation. In response to each point the Synod didn’t merely write one counter-point; instead, each became a “head” (caput) or main point of doctrine.

But there are four heads, not five. The third and fourth points of the Remonstrance — human corruption, and God’s grace in conversion — were answered together in a single combined head, which is why articles from that portion are cited as “3/4.”

The Synod treated them together because the Remonstrants’ original third point on the corruption of human nature was unobjectionable in itself, though by the time the Synod met they had written a good deal more that gave cause for concern. And since corruption and the grace that overcomes it form one continuous argument, the two were merged: what the third point describes, the fourth answers.

Are the Canons of Dort the same as TULIP?

No. Am I allowed to say there is no such thing as the five points of Calvinism? I just did.

TULIP is the acronym for Total depravity, Unconditional election, Limited atonement, Irresistible grace, and Perseverance — or Preservation — of the saints. It’s supposedly what the Synod of Dort decided contra the Arminians. But the acronym is a twentieth-century invention. It has been traced to a 1905 address by a Dr. McAfee of Brooklyn, delivered to the Presbyterian Union of Newark, New Jersey. It reorders the actual points of both the Remonstrants and the response in the Canons; their own sequence would give you something more like ULTIP. And it would have been impossible to come up with in the seventeenth-century Netherlands, since the Dutch word for tulip is tulp. I guess the phrase “limited atonement” is limited after all.

Modern terminology over-simplifies historical complexities. If I could travel back just before the Synod to the Dutch city of Heusden and ask its new pastor and future delegate, Gijsbertus Voetius, “Domine Voetius, what does it mean to be Reformed?” he might have said: “To believe the thirty-seven articles of the Belgic Confession and the one hundred twenty-nine questions and answers of the Heidelberg Catechism, of course!” That is 166 points of theology before Dort ever met. Add the Canons’ ninety-three articles and rejections and you have 259-point Calvinism. And we think being a five-pointer is really flexing some theological muscle.

Richard Muller has put it plainly: there are more than five points, and there cannot be such a thing as a five-point Calvinist who owns those five articles and refuses the rest. I’ve made the case at length in Grace Worth Fighting For, and more briefly in why I love these canons after twenty-five years of reading them.

But there is a second problem with the acronym, and it runs deeper than the arithmetic. Each of its five letters also misdescribes the doctrine it is meant to summarize. Those five misunderstandings are common enough, and consequential enough, that this guide takes them one at a time below.

Were the Canons narrow or catholic?

The Canons make a striking claim about themselves. At the end of the fifth point of doctrine, article 15, they say the bride of Christ has always loved this teaching very tenderly and defended it steadfastly as a priceless treasure. Always — which invites the question: are the Canons catholic?

The men at Dort thought so, and they aimed at it deliberately. In March 1619, Samuel Ward of the British delegation asked King James to press the Synod to have a special eye to the definitions of the ancient councils against the Pelagians. The King agreed. His Secretary of State wrote to the Ambassador that the conclusions against the Remonstrants should be couched as near as possible to the forms used in the primitive church by the fathers of that time against the Pelagians and Semi-Pelagians, and not in any new phrases of the modern age. The Palatinate delegates advised the same: form the response as the ancient councils had, in brief and vigorous canons.

They followed through. Pelagius, Pelagian, and Pelagianism appear eight times across the Canons. One rejected view smacks of Pelagius — Pelagium enim sapiunt — and in our parlance, if it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, it’s a duck. Another summons back from hell the Pelagian error. A third is called the deadly poison of Pelagianism.

The delegates’ own working papers say the same thing more quietly. Donald Sinnema counted 119 references to theological sources across the various iudicia: sixty-five to Augustine, thirty-seven to other patristic writers such as Prosper, eleven to medieval sources — and only six to Reformation and post-Reformation authors.

Far from being a Reformed distinctive, the doctrine of sin and grace at Dort is a faithful appropriation of ancient Augustinian catholicity as expressed at the Second Council of Orange in 529. This is what a Reformed church has always understood itself to be — not a new thing, but an old one recovered.

What does each head of doctrine teach?

The Canons move in four movements: redemption planned, accomplished, applied, and preserved.

Redemption Planned — First Head: 18 articles, 9 rejections

The first point opens not with predestination but with our sin and condemnation, God’s love in Christ, and God’s mercy in preaching. Election is defined only in article 7, with our salvation as its subordinate end and God’s own glory as its ultimate one. Article 9 denies there are prerequisites in us that cause election; faith and holiness are its effects. Then come the questions people actually ask: whether assurance is possible (12–13), and whether election should be preached at all (14). The Westminster divines faced that same question, and I’ve written on how they handled so high a mystery. Reprobation appears only in article 15, followed at once by two pastoral answers (16–17).

Redemption Accomplished — Second Head: 9 articles, 7 rejections

The second point begins with the doctrine of God: he is not only supremely merciful but also supremely just, and his justice requires that the sins we have committed against his infinite majesty be punished. We cannot escape unless satisfaction is given. Christ’s death is that satisfaction — the only and entirely complete sacrifice for sins, of infinite value and worth, more than sufficient to atone for the sins of the whole world (2.3). And so the promise, together with the command to repent and believe, ought to be announced and declared without differentiation or discrimination to all nations and people (2.5). Article 8, the lengthiest in the section, defines what the Father intended that death to accomplish.

Redemption Applied — Third and Fourth Heads: 17 articles, 9 rejections

These begin with Adam formed after the image of God, his understanding adorned with a true and saving knowledge of his Creator, his heart and will upright, all his affections pure. By his fall he forfeited these excellent gifts, and in their place came blindness of mind, horrible darkness, and perverseness of judgment. Glimmerings of natural light remain, but so far is this light of nature from being sufficient to bring anyone to a saving knowledge of God; nor can the law, which points out no remedy and imparts no strength. What therefore neither the light of nature nor the law could do, that God performs — by the operation of the Holy Spirit through the Word.

Redemption Preserved — Fifth Head: 15 articles, 9 rejections

The fifth point opens with two common Christian convictions that frame everything after: we are freed from our slavery to sin, but not from our struggle with sin. Hence spring daily sins of infirmity, and hence spots adhere to the best works of the saints. Left to their own strength, the converted could not persevere. But God is faithful, who having conferred grace mercifully confirms and powerfully preserves them therein, even to the end. The rest of the head takes up what follows: serious sin, assurance, the means of grace, and consolation.

IMAGE 5 — original graphic. Vertical flow of the four movements with head numbers and article counts.

What are the Rejection of Errors?

Every head follows the same shape. It opens with several articles of common Christian conviction, catholic ground almost anyone would grant (1.1–4; 2.1–7; 3/4.1–2 and 4–5; 5.1–2). Then one article defines the disputed doctrine (1.7; 2.8; 3/4.3 and 6; 5.3). Then the implications are drawn out — God’s justice and the fault of sin, the responsibility of man in salvation, assurance of faith, godliness, and the importance of the means of grace. Only then come the rejections.

There are thirty-four of them, and they are the least-read part of the document. They shouldn’t be. The rejections are where you discover what was actually at stake, and they are not caricatures. When the Remonstrants were dismissed on January 14, 1619, the States General had already resolved that their doctrines would be judged on the basis of their published writings, and a committee drew up a series of theses from those sources. So what the rejections quote back is the Remonstrants’ own language — from the Remonstrance of 1610, from the 1611 conference at The Hague, from Episcopius and Barlaeus and Arminius himself.

Do the Canons teach that God only loves some people?

This is the objection that comes up most, and the Canons answer it before they ever reach the doctrine of election.

Watch the order of the opening articles. Article 1 says that God is just. Article 2 says that God is love. Article 3 says that God is merciful — and that mercy takes the form of sending preachers, since it is by their ministry that people are called to repentance and faith in Christ crucified. Three articles in, and not a word yet about a decree.

My two brothers and I all have heard the good news of Jesus. Yet two of the three of us do not evidence a true faith. Many of you are in the same situation with your family, and the question is why. The Canons don’t dodge it. As many as are called by the gospel are unfeignedly called — serio vocantur, seriously called (3/4.8). That phrase was the Remonstrants’ own; the Synod took it up from them. God has most earnestly and truly declared in his Word what will be acceptable to him: that all who are called should comply with the invitation. And where someone doesn’t, the Canons are equally direct about where the fault lies. It is not the fault of the gospel, nor of Christ offered therein; the fault lies in themselves (3/4.9).

The second head is more explicit still. The promise of the gospel, together with the command to repent and believe, ought to be announced and declared without differentiation or discrimination to all nations and people (2.5).

The Synod knew it would be accused anyway. Its Conclusion lists four slanders then in circulation, the last of which was that in the same manner in which election is the fountain and the cause of faith and good works, reprobation is the cause of unbelief and impiety. The response is not a careful qualification. These and many other things of the same kind, the Synod said, the Reformed churches not only do not acknowledge, but even detest with their whole soul.

Do the Canons teach double predestination?

It’s popularly said that Reformed theology confesses double predestination. John Piper calls himself a seven-point Calvinist because he says the five points lead to two further truths, one of them double predestination.

But double predestination is neither distinctly Reformed nor even agreed upon as to what one means by it. Isidore of Seville spoke of gemina praedestinatio and Thomas Bradwardine of duplex praedestinatio. This is a long medieval conversation the Reformed inherited rather than invented. And even Gottschalk, who said God predestines to life and equally — pariter — to death, did not actually treat the two as equal. Donald Sinnema, who has studied the question most closely, says that to speak of the Calvinist view of reprobation in this period is much too imprecise, because there was no single Calvinist position. The delegates at the Synod debated at least six of them.

What they adopted was the late medieval distinction between negative and positive reprobation, developed by Nicholas of Lyra and later popularized by Etienne Brulefer. God’s will is the cause of negative reprobation, or preterition, in which he passes over the non-elect. Human sin is the cause of positive reprobation, or condemnation.

So watch the verbs in article 15. The non-elect are passed by (praeteritos), left (relinquere), permitted to follow their own ways — and only then, for the declaration of his justice, condemned, not only on account of their unbelief but also for all their other sins. God actively chooses some to life apart from their works. He passively leaves others in their sin. Only then does he actively decree the condemnation their sin deserves.

Those are not parallel acts. Dort was saying nothing here that the Belgic Confession had not already said in its sixteenth article, fifty-seven years earlier. And article 15 ends by insisting that the decree of reprobation by no means makes God the author of sin — the very thought of which is blasphemy.

The caricature is old. In 1592, a quarter-century before Dort met, the Lutheran Saxon Visitation Articles were already listing among the false and erroneous doctrines of the Calvinists that God created the greater part of mankind for eternal damnation. It wasn’t true then either.

Do the Canons teach “limited” atonement?

The Canons never use the phrase, and neither word in it is really theirs. “Atonement” was William Tyndale’s attempt to popularize the language of propitiation and satisfaction, which is what was actually being debated at Dort. The Synod’s own title for the second head was De Morte Christi et Hominum per eam Redemptione — concerning the death of Christ and the redemption of humanity through it. “Limited atonement” has limited usefulness.

It’s unhelpful for a second reason. Thinking in crass quantitative terms makes it sound as though Jesus’ death gathered as many sinners as possible with the available blood he spilled and then ran out. What the Canons say is that this death of God’s Son is of infinite value and worth, more than sufficient to atone for the sins of the whole world (2.3) — abunde sufficiens, abundantly sufficient. Aquinas said Christ’s death would suffice were there infinite worlds. Perkins said the price could redeem a thousand worlds of men. Owen said that if there were a thousand worlds, the gospel might upon this ground be preached to them all.

Now here is what usually goes unnoticed. Except for consistent universalists, everyone limits the saving efficacy of Christ’s death — the Remonstrants included. Their own second article says Jesus died for all men and for every man, meriting reconciliation and forgiveness for all, and then adds: yet so that no one actually enjoys this forgiveness of sins except the believer.

We on the Reformed side like to say that Calvinists limit extent while Arminians limit efficacy. I think that’s overly simplified. We both limit the extent of Christ’s death. The difference is that we limit it according to God’s will, while Arminians limit it according to man’s.

Think of a bare light with no shade. It disperses everywhere — infinitely sufficient to satisfy the infinite justice of God for a million worlds. Put a cap on it and all that same light is focused in a particular direction. Call that limited atonement if you must; I will call it Jesus doing exactly what God planned.

Do the Canons teach “irresistible” grace?

The word isn’t from the Canons. It’s from the Remonstrance. The fourth Remonstrant article grants that grace is necessary and then adds the clause that mattered: but with respect to the mode of this grace, it is not irresistible. There is poison in the tail, as David Paraeus put it. King James said much the same more diplomatically — the articles were expressed with cunning and art to make a specious show.

Paraeus called the term horrid and barbarous, and said our orthodox men do not acknowledge this barbarous and ambiguous word. He had a reason. There is a sense in which the Reformed affirm that grace is resistible. The outward call of the gospel is not irresistible but, in his words, too much resistible — the will before conversion can do nothing but resist it. Scripture says exactly that of people who were stiff-necked, uncircumcised in heart and ears, and always resisting the Holy Spirit.

So what do the Canons say? Just as sin did not deprive Adam of his human nature but brought upon him depravity and spiritual death, so this grace of regeneration does not treat people as senseless stocks and blocks (3/4.16). The Latin is truncis et stipitibus — tree trunks and stakes. Inanimate, lifeless things. We are not saying human beings were mindless zombies that God grabbed and made human, and we are not saying he bypassed the intellect and will in converting us. Sometimes well-intentioned Reformed people say, “I was brought into the kingdom kicking and screaming; that’s irresistible grace.” That is not what the article says.

Grace does not take away the will and its properties, neither does violence thereto. Instead it spiritually quickens, heals, corrects, and at the same time sweetly and powerfully bends it. A will once bent in upon itself is bent outward toward its Maker. And the article ends by insisting that it is in this that the true and spiritual restoration and freedom of our will consist.

The word to use isn’t irresistible. It’s efficacious.

Do the Canons teach “once saved, always saved”?

Do we believe that those God in his love chose in eternity will spend an eternity loving him? Yes. But look at how the slogan gets used. It’s used to say that a person who claims to be a Christian can live like an unbeliever his or her whole life and still be saved. It’s used to justify sin and apathy about godliness. So do we believe once saved, always saved? Not in that familiar sense. But yes, if understood rightly.

Start with two words the slogan collapses. Preservation is God’s act. Perseverance is ours. The fifth head is about both.

It opens by conceding the problem rather than hiding it. We are freed from our slavery to sin, but not altogether from the body of sin and from the infirmities of the flesh, so long as we continue in this world. Hence spring daily sins of infirmity, and hence spots adhere to the best works of the saints (5.1–2).

Then the distinction everything turns on. A true believer cannot fall from grace, but a true believer can fall into heinous sins. To fall from grace would be to become unsaved and outside the grip of God’s hand. To fall into sin, even heinous sin, is to say that even then we are in the grip of grace — albeit not a very tight grip. And the Canons name names: this the lamentable fall of David, Peter, and other saints described in Holy Scripture demonstrates. David, who instead of watching out for sin was watching to sin. We are not describing a lifestyle that lasts a lifetime. We are describing some particular instances.

What the Canons deny is that God permits the destruction of that relationship. He renews it. But God is faithful, who having conferred grace mercifully confirms and powerfully preserves them therein, even to the end (5.3).

They also anticipate the abuse. This certainty is so far from rendering believers carnally secure that it is the real source of humility, filial reverence, true piety, and patience in every tribulation. Renewed confidence after backsliding renders believers much more careful and solicitous to continue in the ways of the Lord (5.12–13).

Certainty produces carefulness, not carelessness.

What do the Canons say about children who die in infancy?

They say something — and it is the thing no summary of TULIP will ever tell you.

This was not an abstract question in 1618. In France around that time the recorded mortality rate ran between fifteen and thirty percent of babies born alive, and of those who lived from one to five years, another eighteen percent died. It isn’t abstract now either. Miscarriage is the most common type of pregnancy loss; somewhere between ten and twenty-five percent of clinically recognized pregnancies end in one. I’ve said more about ministering to families after a miscarriage.

Article 17 grounds its answer in the covenant. The children of believers are holy, not by nature, but in virtue of the covenant of grace, in which they together with the parents are comprehended. And so: godly parents have no reason to doubt of the election and salvation of their children whom it pleaseth God to call out of this life in their infancy.

You may be thinking, but what does that say to me in my grief? Read the sentence again. This is a litotes — a rhetorical understatement that uses a negative to assert a positive. When Paul told the crowd he was a citizen of no obscure city, he meant Tarsus was a major one. When Luke wrote that no small tempest lay upon them, he meant the storm was enormous. As one commentator put it, when God-fearing parents cry over their precious gifts they could only briefly enjoy having, they may look up together and remind one another that their children were fruits early ripe for heaven.

Some read article 17 and say the Canons aren’t really saying anything. No. They’re saying everything, with rhetorical effect. Have no reason to doubt means be confident.

How do the Canons give assurance?

Article 9 makes a claim more confident than most people expect. Of this preservation of the elect to salvation and of their perseverance in the faith, true believers not only may but do obtain assurance — according to the measure of their faith.

That last phrase matters. Faith is rooted in the objectivity of Christ and his salvation, although subjectively I may or may not feel that at any given time. Hebrews contrasts babes with mature men, and an immature believer doesn’t exercise faith the way a seasoned one does. Assurance is a possibility for all of us, although it may not be a possession yet.

Article 10 then says where assurance does not come from: not by any peculiar revelation contrary to, or independent of, the Word of God. That is aimed at Rome. At Trent in 1546 the Council declared anathema anyone claiming an absolute and infallible certainty of final perseverance unless he had learned it by special revelation. Dort’s answer is that Paul needed no private disclosure to write Romans 8, and neither do you.

Where it does come from is three things — and they are not magic remedies taken once. They have to be cultivated over the course of your life. First and foremost, God’s promises, which he has most abundantly revealed in his Word for our comfort. Second, the testimony of the Holy Spirit witnessing with our spirit that we are children and heirs of God — a testimony that, though not always alike powerful in believers, manifests itself many times in their greatest humiliation and distress. Third, a serious and holy desire to preserve a good conscience and to perform good works.

Then article 11 concedes what every believer already knows. Believers in this life have to struggle with various carnal doubts, and under grievous temptations they are not always sensible of this full assurance of faith and certainty of persevering. A confession willing to say that is not a cold one. I work through the fifth head article by article in Grace Worth Fighting For.

Where do the Canons fit among the Three Forms of Unity?

The Canons were the last of the three to be written, and the only one written to settle an argument. The Belgic Confession came in 1561 and the Heidelberg Catechism in 1563, both composed to teach and to confess. The Canons came in 1618–19 to answer a specific protest, which is why they don’t read like the other two.

That’s also why they were never meant to stand alone — and the clearest evidence is the Form of Subscription adopted after the Synod for ministers, professors, schoolteachers, elders, and deacons. Read its central sentence closely. They declared, sincerely and in good conscience before the Lord, that they heartily believed all the articles and points of doctrine contained in the Belgic Confession and Heidelberg Catechism, together with the explanation of some points of the aforesaid doctrine made by the National Synod of Dordrecht, do fully agree with the Word of God.

Notice the grammar. The Canons aren’t a third item in a series. They’re appended to the other two as an explanation of some points already confessed there. Some points — not the whole faith. They became the third of the Three Forms afterward, by use rather than by design.

The churches I serve still require this subscription. I’m a 259-point Calvinist.

What else did the Synod of Dort decide?

Almost everything written about Dort concerns the five heads of doctrine. But the Synod sat for 180 half-day sessions, and the Canons occupied only part of them.

Before the Remonstrants arrived, it took up catechism instruction, preparation for the ministry, the baptism of slaves throughout the Dutch colonies, book censorship, and a new Dutch Bible translation — the work that eventually produced the Statenbijbel of 1637.

After the Canons were read publicly, it turned to standardizing the Dutch Church Order and the existing confessions, and to internal matters including Sabbath observance. That last produced a deliverance that has received almost no attention in English. I’ve written on the Synod’s rules for observing the Sabbath.

Where should I start?

Start with the Canons themselves. They are shorter than you expect — an afternoon, not a semester — and most objections to them dissolve on first contact with the actual text.

If the Reformed tradition as a whole is new to you, Welcome to a Reformed Church is the front door, taking up creeds and confessions, worship, and church government before any of this.

Then, for the Canons article by article with the history and the rejections included, Grace Worth Fighting For.

Everything else I’ve written on Dort and the confessions is collected under articles and books.

Primary sources and further reading

The text. The Canons of Dort in English — threeforms.org, or urcna.org/canons.

The proceedings. Acta et Documenta Synodi Nationalis Dordrechtanae, ed. Donald Sinnema, Christian Moser, and Herman Selderhuis — the critical edition.

The British delegation. Anthony Milton, ed., The British Delegation and the Synod of Dort.

Current scholarship. Revisiting the Synod of Dordt, ed. Aza Goudriaan and Fred van Lieburg.

Expositions. Cornelis Venema, But for the Grace of God; Peter Y. De Jong, ed., Crisis in the Reformed Churches.

Theology That Becomes Biography

drhyde@danielrhyde.com

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