Van Leeuwen authored several books and articles on biblical hermeneutics, liturgy, the Christian year, the history of the Remonstrant Brotherhood, and ecumenism. Ontology and eschatology in the philosophy of Paul Ricoeur, (Rodopi 1981). Marius van Leeuwen is Professor at the Remonstrant Seminary (Institute for Religious Studies, Leiden University). Was it influenced by Socinianism, as its opponents often claimed? How was it received in Europe: in Germany, Switzerland (Geneva), England, and Ireland? How far did Arminianism prepare the way for the ideals of the Enlightenment, which made its entry later on in the seventeenth century? An extensive iconography of Jacobus Arminius and an annotated bibliography of all his known writings complete, in the third part, this volume. The first part contains some essays on the thinking of Arminius himself: the structure of his theology, his relation to Augustine, and to Rome.
The main contributions to that conference are collected in this book. The day of the death of this remarkable theologian was commemorated with a conference at Leiden University on Arminius, Aminianism, and Europe (9 and 10 October 2009).
Was he a pioneer, who enriched the Reformed tradition by opening it towards new horizons, or a heretic, who founded a new tradition, as an alternative to Reformed theology? However, because of his deviation from mainstream Calvinism, he has also been violently attacked. He was esteemed for the way in which he sought a via media between strict Calvinism and a more humanistic variant of Christian belief. 19 October 2009 marked the 400th anniversary of the death of Jacobus Arminius in Leiden.