John Goodwin and the Origins of the New Arminianism

Between the accession of Charles I in 1625 and the restoration of Charles II in 1660 Calvinism lost its hold over English religious life. The effect of Arminianism on this decline has yet to be fully understood. The impact of the early English Arminians, the circle of Archbishop Laud, is, to be sure, well known. Less appreciated is the emergence of an Arminian critique of Calvinism from within the culture of nonconformity. This “radical” or, preferably, “new” Arminianism was a phenomenon of the Cromwellian era, the 1640s and 1650s. By reconstructing the origins of the new Arminianism of its chief exponent, John Goodwin (1595-1666), this essay will try to demonstrate its pivotal place as a link between the Puritanism of the pre-civil war decades and the rational theology of the early English Enlightenment.