Why is Jacobus Arminius not famous even though he started one of the two main branches of Protestant theology (The other being Calvinism which is well known).
Probably because not enough people know who he is.
Well, I don’t think he’s well known either. Ask 10 random people who Calvin is and I bet you’ll get 8 Kleins, and 2 Coolidges.
Or a comic character who loves a stuffed tiger.
I never heard of him (but then again, I’m not Protestant, or any form of Christian), so I had to look him up in Wikipedia to find out who he is. The article mentions that John Wesley was one of his advocates, and I think many Americans have heard of him (or the Methodist church), at least through the names of the universities in Connecticut, Ohio and elsewhere.
I hadn’t heard of the guy, but I knew the term Arminian Christianity. (It teaches that you have to maintain your salvation after you get it.) I’d always thought it came from Armenia, though…
To answer the question: probably because the denominations that sprang from his ideology all have someone more famous to look up to. Wesley, the most popular, has already been mentioned. See the Arminian Wikipedia category for a bunch of Arminian denominations, all of which count someone else as their founder.
So Luther and Zwingli are chopped liver?
Ironically, the Calvin of Calvin and Hobbs was named after that Calvin.
I said main branches. The vast majority of Protestants to-day are Calvinists or Arminians. The only people who believe in Luther’s view of salvation are Lutherans and I don’t think there are any major denominations that practice Zwingli’s view of salvation which I if I remember correctly is a modified version of Calvinism.
What numbers are you using? Lutherans are certainly at the lower end in numbers, but on the same order of magnitude. Probably about half as many as the Calvinist or Arminian denominations, which doesn’t seem that insignificant. Especially in light of Luther’s historical importance to Protestantism.
Luther did start the Reformation but much of his theology is not widespread. Also Lutherans are not half of Calvinist or Arminian denominations as they are only widespread in Germany, Scandanavia, and their descendents in America.
Since Zwingli’s movement predated Calvin’s, I have a hard time seeing how it could be a modified version of it.
Almost no Christian denominations believe in Arminianism, though the teachings of Arminius influenced John Wesley and the General/Free Will Baptists (a much smaller group than the major Baptist conventions).
Calvinists have a tendency to use “Arminian” in the sense of “invertebrate” or “Gentile” – a convenient way to lump together everyone who doesn’t meet their own self-definition. But the number of people who believe in total depravity, resistable grace, and conditional election (all doctrines taught by old Jacobus) is pretty slender.l
Well that clears that up…
Seriously though, I think the development of some moderate response to Calvinism was inevitable, as certain aspects of it (strict predestination in particular) simply didn’t sit well with the general public in many places. If it hadn’t been Arminius it would have been someone else and so it’s hard to think of him as being in the same league as unique theologans such as Calvin, Luther or Zwingle.
EDIT: And what Polycarp said.
I definitely believe in total depravity-- if I’d known Wesley did too I probably would have paid more attention in my childhood Methodist church.
One of these days, I hope someone posts a link to a gigantic tree diagram that shows the evolution of every current (or dead) religious belief. Would make things a lot simpler, it would.