The synod of Dordt was concerned to defend the doctrine of the sovereign grace of God against the encroachment upon it by the doctrine of the free will of man. By the free will of man we mean the would-be-autonomy of fallen man.

The apostle Paul tells us that there are two and only two kinds of people in this world. There are those who, because of their fall in Adam, serve and worship the creature rather than the Creator, and there are those who, because of their redemption from the fall through Jesus Christ, have learned to serve God their Creator and Christ their Redeemer rather than the creature.

Men of the second group are not, of themselves, any better than men of the first group. It is not because of superior wisdom found in themselves that they of the second group have learned to serve and to worship God. It is, rather, because they have been born of the Spirit, born from above, that they would now dedicate themselves and their all to the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit.

TABLE OF CONTENTSI. The Meaning of Dordt1. The Roman Catholic Synthesis2. The Reformation Principle3. The Remonstrant Synthesis4. The Five Points of Calvinism5. The Reformation Principle Again6. The Remonstrant Synthesis AgainII. Opposition to Dordt1. A Roman Catholic Critique2. The Amyraldean Synthesis3. The Roman-Remonstrant Amyraldian Synthesis4. The Neo-Orthodox Synthesis5. The Aristotle-Christ-Kant Synthesis6. Beyond DordtIll. Reformed Criticism of Dordt1. The Dordt-Barth Synthesis2. G. C. Berkouwer - A Reappraisal of Dordt