GOMARUS, FRANCISCUS

born Jan. 30, 1563, Bruges, Flanders [now in Belgium] died Jan. 11, 1641, Groningen, Neth. English Francis Gomar, French Franois Gomar Calvinist theologian and professor whose disputes with his more liberal colleague Jacobus Arminius over the doctrine of predestination led the entire Dutch Reformed Church into controversy. Gomarus served as pastor of a Dutch Reformed church in Frankfurt am Main from 1587 until 1593, when the congregation was dispersed by anti-Protestant persecution. In 1594 he was appointed professor of theology at the University of Leiden, where he became a leader of the opponents of Arminius. When Arminius joined the same faculty in 1603, their disputes increased in intensity. Gomarus debated Arminius before the assembly of the estates (regional governmental bodies) of Holland in 1608 and was one of five Gomarists who debated five Arminians in the same assembly in 1609. In their disputes Gomarus upheld the strict Calvinist view that those elected to salvation had already been chosen before Adam's Fall, but Arminius allowed for the possibility that every man was potentially a member of the elect. Later a professor at Saumur and at Groningen, Gomarus took a leading part in the Synod of Dort (Dordrecht) in 1618-19 as an opponent of Arminianism, which was condemned by the synodical delegates.