GOMAR, FRANÇOIS. - A Belgian Protestant theologian, b. at Bruges on 30 Jan. 1563, d. at Groningen on 11 Jan. 1641. He first studied at Strasbourg and Neustadt, then theology at Oxford under John Reynold and with William Whitaker at Cambridge, where he obtained his bachelor’s degree in 1584, later earning his doctorate at Heidelberg. In 1593, after serving for six years as pastor of the Flemish Reformed Church in Frankfurt am Main, he was appointed professor of theology at Leiden, where in 1603, following the death of F. Junius, he was joined by Jacobus Arminius, with whom he soon engaged in an unrelenting controversy that led to the division of the Dutch Church into two hostile factions.
The cause of the dispute was Arminius’s more moderate new theories on predestination (v.), which Gomarus, a staunch Calvinist, vigorously opposed, accusing Arminius of Pelagianism. The conflict soon spread to their followers, giving rise to a Gomarist party, later also called the Contra-Remonstrants, in opposition to an Arminian party known as the Remonstrants, whose disputes escalated to the brink of civil war. Even the government intervened, ordering public debates, which, however, failed to achieve reconciliation.
Not even Arminius’s death (19 Oct. 1609) succeeded in calming the factions, especially since his successor in the chair was his friend Conrad Vorstius, whose appointment Gomarus had opposed by every means possible. Indignant at his failure to prevent it, Gomarus retired to Middelburg (1611), where he devoted himself to preaching and teaching theology and Hebrew. In 1614, having accepted a professorship of theology at the faculty of Saumur, he remained in France until 1618; he then returned to Holland as professor of theology and Hebrew at Groningen, a position he held until his death. He took part in the National Synod of Dort (Dordrecht; 13 Nov. 1618 – 29 May 1619), convened by Stadtholder Maurice of Nassau, who sided with the Gomarists, and presided over by Johannes Bogermann, who had been his ally at the outset of the polemics against Arminius. At the Synod, Gomarus worked diligently to secure the condemnation of Arminian theories. In 1633, he collaborated in the Leiden revision of the Flemish translation of the Old Testament, commonly cited under the name Dutch Bible.
A man of wide learning, though lacking in critical sensibility, Gomarus left an abundant literary output, both theological and otherwise: *Francisci Gomari opera theologica omnia, maximam partem posthuma, suprema authoris voluntate a discipulis edita*, 3 vols., Amsterdam 1644; 2nd ed., ibid. 1664.