Canons of Dort

Reformed Synod of Dort, 1618–1619 One of the Three Forms of Unity

The Canons of Dort were produced by the Synod of Dort (1618–1619), an international Reformed council convened to adjudicate the controversy raised by Jacobus Arminius and his followers (the Remonstrants). The Remonstrants submitted five articles in 1610 asserting conditional election, universal atonement, resistible grace, and the possibility of falling from grace. The Synod replied with five "heads of doctrine" — the Calvinist doctrines popularly summarized as TULIP. Together with the Heidelberg Catechism and the Belgic Confession, the Canons form the Three Forms of Unity.

For he chose us in him before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless in his sight. In love he predestined us for adoption to sonship through Jesus Christ, in accordance with his pleasure and will. — Ephesians 1:4–5

First Head of Doctrine — Divine Election and Reprobation

Corresponding to the Remonstrant Article I on conditional election.

Articles

Since all people have sinned in Adam and have come under the sentence of the curse and eternal death, God would have done no one an injustice if it had been His will to leave the entire human race in sin and under the curse, and to condemn them on account of their sin. As the apostle says: The whole world is liable to the condemnation of God (Rom. 3:19), all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God (Rom. 3:23), and the wages of sin is death (Rom. 6:23).

But in this God has shown that He is merciful, in that He sends messengers of this joyful message to whomever He wills and at whatever time He wills; by virtue of which message some repent and believe. To those who do not believe, God owes nothing beyond what He has shown to all through general revelation. (Rom. 10:14–15)

Now, it is not by any merit of his own that man can produce this faith in himself or others; rather, it is God who bestows the gift of faith. For what does man have that he has not received from God? (1 Cor. 4:7; Eph. 2:8)

God's wrath remains on those who do not believe this gospel. But God's wrath is satisfied for those who do accept it and who embrace Jesus the Savior with a true and living faith. Such people are delivered through Him from God's wrath and from destruction, and receive the gift of eternal life. (John 3:36)

The cause or blame for this unbelief, as well as for all other sins, is not at all in God, but in man. Faith in Jesus Christ, however, and salvation through Him is a free gift of God, as Scripture states: It is by grace you have been saved, through faith, and this not from yourselves; it is the gift of God. (Eph. 2:8–9)

That some receive from God the gift of faith within time, and that others do not, stems from His eternal decree. God has always most freely and most graciously ordained all His works, both in heaven and on earth, according to His good pleasure. Election is God's unchangeable purpose by which He did the following: before the foundation of the world He chose, out of the entire human race, a definite number of specific people, whom He had in mind as sinners, to be saved through Christ. Those chosen were neither better nor more deserving than the others; they lay in the same misery with all the rest. (Rom. 9:11; Eph. 1:4–5)

Election is the unchangeable purpose of God by which, before the foundation of the world, He chose, out of the entire human race fallen by their own fault from their original integrity into sin and ruin, a definite number of specific people to be redeemed by Christ. He chose them in Christ, to whom He also gave them for salvation, and He decreed to bring them to faith through the Word and Spirit, to justify and sanctify them, and ultimately to glorify them. (Rom. 8:30; John 10:27–29)

This election is not of many kinds; it is one and the same election for all who are saved — of Old Testament and New Testament believers alike — since Scripture declares there is one single decree, purpose, and plan of God's goodness. Election does not depend on a foreseen faith, the obedience of faith, holiness, or any other good quality in man as its prior condition or cause, but on the good pleasure of God alone. (Rom. 11:5–6; 2 Tim. 1:9)

Election was not founded upon foreseen faith, as though it were a reward for faith, but rather the election itself is the source from which God grants saving faith and all other saving gifts. For this is what God Himself says: I will have mercy on whom I have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I have compassion. (Rom. 9:15; Rom. 9:16)

10.

The good pleasure of God is the sole cause of this gracious election. It does not consist of a choice of certain qualities or actions of people from among all those possible as a condition of salvation, but rather of choosing certain particular persons from among the common mass of sinners. This is expressed in Scripture as God choosing men before the foundation of the world. (Eph. 1:4; Acts 13:48)

11–13.

This election is immutable; the elect cannot be lost or go to perdition. The elect are assured of their election not by peering into the hidden counsel of God but by observing in themselves — with spiritual joy and holy delight — the infallible fruits of election such as faith in Christ, childlike fear of God, a godly sorrow for their sins, a hungering and thirsting after righteousness, and so on. (Rom. 8:33–34; 2 Pet. 1:10)

14.

This doctrine of divine election must, by God's wise plan, be proclaimed through the preaching of the Word, at the proper time and place — without inquisitively searching into the ways of the Most High. This doctrine must not be opposed but received with the reverence due to God's holy name, and must be explored with a sincere desire to know Scripture. (Rom. 11:33–36)

15.

Holy Scripture most especially highlights this eternal and undeserved grace of our election by proclaiming and revealing to us that not all people have been chosen but that some have not been elected or have been passed by in God's eternal election — those, namely, whom God, out of His most free, most just, irreproachable, and unchangeable good pleasure, decreed to leave in the common misery into which they have plunged themselves, and not to grant them saving faith and the grace of conversion. This is the decree of reprobation. (Rom. 9:18–22; Jude 4)

16–18.

Those who do not yet sense within themselves a living faith in Christ or an assured confidence of heart should not be alarmed by hearing of reprobation. Rather, they should diligently use the means of grace and earnestly desire a more abundant knowledge. As for those who seriously desire to turn to God and to please Him alone and to be delivered from the body of death, they should certainly not fear that they are reckoned among the reprobate. (Isa. 55:1–3; Rev. 22:17)

Rejection of Errors

The Synod rejects the errors of those who teach that the will of God to save those who would believe and persevere in faith and in the obedience of faith is the complete and entire decree of election, and that no other decree about election to salvation has been revealed in God's Word.

The Synod also rejects the teaching that there are various kinds of election to eternal life: a general and indefinite election, and a special and definite election; that God has not decreed from eternity to give Christ to the elect; and that God did not elect specific persons but elected faith and obedience itself.

Second Head of Doctrine — Christ's Death and Human Redemption Through It

Corresponding to the Remonstrant Article II on universal atonement.

God is not only supremely merciful, but also supremely just. His justice requires (as He has revealed Himself in His Word) that the sins we have committed against His infinite majesty are punished with both temporal and eternal punishments, of soul as well as body. We cannot escape these punishments unless satisfaction is made to God's justice. (Rom. 6:23; Heb. 9:22)

But since we ourselves cannot make this satisfaction, and since God's wrath would remain upon us if we stood accountable for our own sins, God in His boundless mercy gave His only begotten Son as our surety. The Son of God took on flesh and blood; He bore the punishment of sin in His soul and body on the wood of the cross; He poured out His life and shed His blood, fully satisfying God's just wrath against sin. (1 John 4:10; Rom. 3:25; Isa. 53:10)

This death of God's Son is the only and entirely complete sacrifice and satisfaction for sins; it is of infinite value and worth, more than sufficient to atone for the sins of the whole world. (Heb. 10:14; 1 John 2:2)

This death is of such great value and worth for the reason that the person who suffered it is — as was necessary to be our Savior — not only a true and perfectly holy man, but also the only begotten Son of God, of the same eternal and infinite essence with the Father and the Holy Spirit. Another reason is that this death was accompanied by the experience of God's anger and curse, which we by our sins had fully deserved. (Heb. 2:9; Gal. 3:13)

Moreover, it is the promise of the gospel that whoever believes in Christ crucified shall not perish but have eternal life. This promise, together with the command to repent and believe, ought to be announced and declared without restriction or discrimination to all nations and to all people to whom God in His good pleasure sends the gospel. (John 3:16; Mark 16:15)

6–9.

The fact that many who have been called through the gospel do not repent or believe in Christ and perish in unbelief is not due to any deficiency or insufficiency in the sacrifice offered by Christ on the cross, but is entirely their own fault. God's sovereign will is that His elect shall certainly, infallibly, and effectually be saved. He ordained that Christ, through the blood of the cross and the Spirit poured out, should efficaciously redeem from every tribe and nation all those and only those who were chosen from eternity. (John 10:15; John 17:9; Rev. 5:9)

Third and Fourth Heads of Doctrine — Human Corruption, Conversion to God, and the Way It Occurs

Corresponding to Remonstrant Articles III and IV on total depravity and resistible grace.

Man was originally created in the image of God and was furnished in his mind with a true and saving knowledge of his Creator and of spiritual things; his will and heart were upright; all his affections pure; and the whole man was holy. But rebelling against God at the devil's instigation and by his own free will, he deprived himself of these outstanding gifts. (Gen. 1:26–27; Eccl. 7:29)

2–5.

This corruption spread, by God's just judgment, from Adam to all his descendants — not through imitation (as Pelagius taught) but through the propagation of their corrupt nature. Therefore all people are born in sin, are by nature children of wrath, incapable of saving good, prone to evil, dead in their sins, and slaves of sin. Without the regenerating grace of the Holy Spirit, they are neither willing nor able to return to God, reform their corrupt nature, or prepare themselves for its reformation. (Rom. 5:12; Eph. 2:1–3; John 6:44)

6–8.

What neither the light of nature nor the law can do, God accomplishes by the power of the Holy Spirit, through the Word or the ministry of reconciliation. This is the gospel about the Messiah, through which it has pleased God to save believers in every age. When God carries out this good pleasure in His chosen ones, He not only causes the gospel to be proclaimed to them outwardly but also works within them powerfully through the Holy Spirit to open their closed and stubborn hearts to the gospel, illumine their minds, soften their hearts, and circumcise them, infusing new qualities into their will and making it alive. (Rom. 10:14–17; Ezek. 36:26; Phil. 2:13)

This grace of regeneration does not treat people as senseless objects, nor does it abolish the will and its properties or do violence to it. Rather, it spiritually revives, heals, reforms, and — in a manner at once pleasing and powerful — bends it back. As a result, a ready and sincere spiritual obedience begins to reign where before the rebellion and resistance of the flesh were completely dominant. (Phil. 2:13; Rom. 6:17–18)

10–17.

This grace is sovereign and irresistible — God's work in the will is completely free, omnipotent, unfailing, and infallible. All those in whose hearts God works in this marvelous way are certainly, unfailingly, and effectively regenerated and do actually believe. But just as by the fall man did not cease to be man, endowed with intellect and will, so also this divine grace of regeneration does not act on people as if they were blocks of wood and stones; nor does it abolish the will or force it against its inclination. Accordingly, it is completely impossible for this work of grace to be rendered ineffective. (John 6:37; Rom. 9:16; 1 Cor. 2:14)

Fifth Head of Doctrine — The Perseverance of the Saints

Corresponding to Remonstrant Article V on conditional perseverance.

Those people whom God according to His purpose calls into fellowship with His Son Jesus Christ our Lord and regenerates by the Holy Spirit, He also sets free from the dominion and slavery of sin in this life, even if He does not set them free from all the weakness of the flesh and the body of death for the duration of this life. (Rom. 8:30; Rom. 8:1)

Because of the remnants of sin that remain within 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. But God is faithful; He mercifully strengthens them in the grace once given to them and powerfully preserves them in it to the end. (1 Cor. 1:8–9; Phil. 1:6; Jude 24)

3–6.

Because of these remnants of indwelling sin and also the temptations of the world and Satan, those who have been converted are not always led by God in such a way that in certain specific actions they cannot depart from the leading of grace, and cannot fall into serious sins. By such gross sins they greatly offend God, deserve the sentence of death, grieve the Holy Spirit, and wound their consciences. But God, who is rich in mercy, does not take away His Holy Spirit from them, nor does He let them fall away so far that they lose the grace of adoption and the state of justification. (Ps. 89:30–34; 1 John 2:1–2)

7–9.

God preserves, continues, and completes this work of grace in His elect by causing the elect, in times of falling, to return through the Word and Spirit to repentance. The certainty of perseverance does not lead to carelessness but to genuine piety. Scripture itself teaches this assurance in the passages referring to the unbreakable covenant of God and the intercession of Christ. Believers can have such assurance not only from faith in the promises of God but also from the testimony of the Holy Spirit witnessing with their spirits. (John 10:28–29; Rom. 8:16; Heb. 6:17–19)

10–15.

This assurance comes not from any special private revelation but from faith in the promises of God, from the testimony of the Holy Spirit, and from a sincere and holy pursuit of a good conscience and of good works. God never allows the sense of His grace and the comfortable certainty of perseverance to be completely extinguished, even when deeply grieved believers temporarily lack it. He revives them through His Word and Spirit, and their deliverance and their continuing in grace is solely through the grace of God — not through their own merits. (2 Pet. 1:10; Rom. 8:38–39)

Rejection of Errors

The Synod rejects the Remonstrant errors: that true believers can totally and finally fall away from saving faith and lose the grace of adoption; that God grants perseverance only conditionally; and that the assurance of final perseverance cannot be had in this life without a special revelation.

Scripture clearly teaches that God, who began a good work, will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus (Phil. 1:6), and that nothing in all creation will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord (Rom. 8:39).

Text: Synod of Dort (1618–1619). The Canons of Dort are in the public domain. English text adapted from the URCNA translation.