The year of our Lord 2025 marks the 400th anniversary of the death of the oft maligned but rarely read Scottish theologian John Cameron. Among modern Reformed theologians, Cameron—the so-called father of Amyraldianism or Saumur theology—has often played an ignominious role in early modern Reformed orthodoxy. Indeed, Herman Bavinck is representative in portraying Cameron’s theology as paving the way towards “deism and rationalism.”[1] Cameron’s most well-known English biographer characterized Cameron as having “very much of a turn to innovations in doctrine, and seemed to have an inclination to depart from the received truths in the Protestant Churches, and to differ from the sound divines in his time.”[2] Regardless of whether one sees Cameron as a blight or a light upon the development of Reformed orthodoxy, the French historian François Laplanche is undoubtedly right to claim that “every history of French Protestant theology in the seventeenth century should begin with a systematic study of his work.”[3]

Born in Glasgow in 1579/1580, Cameron attended the University of Glasgow around the age of fifteen. His exceptional abilities, particularly with Greek, earned him a teaching position at the University in Greek.[4] Soon, however, he made his way to France (Bordeaux), where he was given a position at the Collège de Bergerac to teach Latin and Greek, both of which he spoke extemporaneously. His scholastic ability soon caught the eye of the Duke of Bouillon, and he was appointed Professor of Philosophy at the Collège de Sedan. A couple years later, in 1604, the Scotsman made his way back to Bordeaux, where the Reformed church offered to finance Cameron’s further theological education in exchange for his promise to minister there upon completion. Cameron accepted this arrangement and went to study in Paris, Geneva, and Heidelberg. In 1608, at the end of his four years of education, he returned to Bordeaux to fulfill his commitment, pastoring there for the next decade. Amusingly, he was known to be an unusually long-winded preacher, often preaching two-hour sermons!

Cameron’s first significant public theological controversy arose during this Bordeaux period, concerning his denial of the imputation of the active obedience of Christ (IAOC).[5] In 1612, amid the debate raging among European Reformed Protestants over the IAOC, the French Reformed held a national synod in order to provide a gloss favoring the IAOC on the eighteenth article of the French Confession (1559), which all ministers and ministerial candidates (proposans) would be required to sign. Cameron, along with many other French ministers, refused to sign the gloss. A subsequent French Synod in 1614 essentially doubled down on this requirement. Cameron continued to refuse to sign, but his former classmate at Glasgow and fellow French minister Andre Rivet (who affirmed the IAOC) convinced the Synod not to censure Cameron, with the latter promising not to teach or write on the subject.

Soon, however, Cameron would have to face a much more powerful faction, the Roman Catholic French political machine, which eventually forced him out of Bordeaux. He found his way to Saumur, where the prestigious Protestant Academy sought him to replace Franciscus Gomarus. At the Academy of Saumur, Cameron served as a professor of theology until 1621. In this relatively brief period, he became the theological father of the Saumurians, working alongside Louis Cappel and teaching Moïse Amyraut and Josué de la Place—all of whom would form, as Albert Gootjes notes, “a ‘triumvirate’ which educated French pastors for more than thirty years and shaped them in the Cameronian theological tradition.”[6] In 1620, nearing the end of his tenure at the Academy, Cameron unintentionally ignited another intra-Reformed controversy, regarding the nature of spiritual regeneration upon the soul. Daniel Tilenus, once Reformed but by then Arminian, requested a conference with Cameron to discuss “the grace of God and the powers of free choice in the business of our (effectual) calling.”[7] In the ensuing debate, Cameron predictably defended the standard Calvinistic approach to why some are graciously saved and others are not, while Tilenus defended the Arminian position. The controversy arose not from Cameron’s basic position but from his willingness to concede certain points to Tilenus, particularly regarding the nature of regeneration itself. Cameron argued that because the human will always and necessarily follow the last judgment of the practical intellect (in accordance with the prevailing faculty psychology), spiritual regeneration works not directly upon the will but only upon the intellect. Seeing that “the will depends upon the intellect, with the renovation of the intellect, it [i.e., the renovation of the intellect] produces the renovation of the will.”[8] Hence, God’s action of regeneration “does not attach itself only to the human intellect, but reaches (pertingit) to the will itself,” yet mediately, as the intellect serves as the instrument by which that action of regenerating the will takes place.[9]

Cameron’s apparent denial of God’s immediate regeneration of the will in conversion prompted the theology professors at Leiden to write to Cameron:

We cannot approve of the fact that you seem, throughout your whole writing [against Tilenus], to either allow or require no other change in the will besides that moral one which arises from an object being presented [to the intellect] and from the judgment of reason about choosing, rejecting, or preferring it, without any immediate influence of God upon the will itself, especially in supernatural matters.[10]

Though this debate may appear academic and labyrinthine, both positions were motivated by pastoral concerns. Cameron, for his part, wished to avoid any position which supposed that God’s work, by the Spirit, upon the soul in conversion was somehow irrational or dependent upon immediate revelation—think charismatic enthusiasm. The Leiden theologians, for their part, were concerned that Cameron was downplaying the supernatural aspect of the Spirit’s action upon the soul during conversion by locating the Spirit’s work as primarily a work upon the intellect through provision of right teaching (i.e., the preaching of the Word)—think rationalism. At a deeper level, however, this controversy was driven by anthropological differences regarding faculty psychology and the ostensible ambiguity over precisely how God’s grace works with and upon the intellect and will more generally.[11] This correspondence between Cameron and the Leiden professors occurred amid further political turmoil in France which forced Cameron to return to the British Isles. King James I immediately appointed him professor of divinity at the University of Glasgow, but after less than a year, he returned to France in 1623, only to be denied a teaching post by King Louis XIII’s court. The following year, the king permitted him to take up a position at the University of Montauban, but Cameron died the following year, in 1625, trying to break up an anti-royalist mob.

Ironically, Cameron is most well known in modern Reformed churches not for any of these public controversies in which he was embroiled during his lifetime, but for his doctrine of “universal grace”, or hypothetical universalism. Although Cameron clearly bequeathed his hypothetical universalism to the later Amyraldians, his views on the extent of the atonement “were, with very few exceptions, simply not known to anybody” while he was alive.[12] This changed when, in 1628, Louis Cappel published private letters Cameron wrote to him during 1610–12. In these letters, within the context of adjudicating the relationship between divine justice and the atoning work of Christ, Cameron explained the universality of Christ’s satisfaction, how he interpreted various Scripture passages (such as 1 Tim. 2:4 and John 3:16), and how he understood the so-called Lombardian formula (Christ died for all sufficiently; Christ died for the elect alone effectually).[13] With the publication of Amyraut’s Brief traité de la predestination, it became apparent that many of Cameron’s best students had absorbed this doctrine of universal grace—a doctrine Cameron had presumably been teaching privately to them. Moreover, while Cameron's teaching on the universality of Christ's death, broadly speaking, was not considered outside the bounds of Reformed orthodoxy (even by those who strongly disagreed[14]), given the other positions his students began to teach—positions which one does not find Cameron clearly defending—the posthumous Cameron would inevitably be caught in the crossfire of Amyraldian controversies.[15]

Evaluating Cameron’s legacy is a difficult business. On the one hand, Cameron was clearly very learned and beloved by his students. The French Protestants repeatedly elected him to debate Arminians and Roman Catholics. Some of his students, especially those connected with the Academy of Saumur, became not only avid defenders of his legacy but also bulwarks for the Protestant faith as religious minorities in Roman Catholic France.[16] Indeed, by the 1650s in France, Cameron’s teaching on universal grace had become widely accepted among French Reformed Protestants through Paris ministers and his disciples at Saumur.[17] Even the Genevan Company of Pastors (admittedly with some misgivings related to Cameron’s aforementioned controversial theological positions) permitted the famous Genevan printer Jacques Chouet to first publish Cameron’s one-volume Opera in 1642! Cameron’s influence, via the Saumur theologians, extended into England. For example, Robert Baillie, one of the five Scottish commissioners at the Westminster Assembly, complained that “Unhappilie Amiraut’s Questions are brought in on our Assemblie. Many more loves these fancies here than I did expect.”[18] Stephen Charnock, in his magnum opus Discourses upon the Existence and Attributes of God, cites Amyraut more than any other author.

On the other hand, some of Cameron’s teachings were undeniably ambiguous, quirky, and prone to heterodox interpretations. For example, the famous English hypothetical universalist and delegate to Dordt, John Davenant, had concerns about the Cameronian position on universal grace as described to him secondhand.[19] Davenant observed that the language of “universal grace” troubled many orthodox theologians because what modern theologians call “common grace” should rather be assigned to God’s common philanthropy toward mankind, not the grace of Christ. Additionally, the Augustinians (Augustine, Prosper, and Fulgentius) held as a dictum that the grace of Christ is not universal.[20] Even Cameron’s own students recognized some deficiencies in Cameron’s theologizing about the order of the divine decrees. Moreover, his disciples could not agree on how he understood divine grace working relative to the intellect and will during conversion.[21] The Arminian Simon Episcopius may have been correct in claiming that “according to Cameron’s hypothesis, the objective revelation of the divine will alone is sufficient to convert a person, without any other internal grace which is impressed immediately on either his mind or will.”[22] This interpretation was consistent with the Saumurian Claude Pajon’s sympathetic interpretation of Cameron, and it does sound Pelagian insofar as the only grace necessary for man’s conversion would be the outward administration of gospel preaching.

To some, Cameron stands as a cautionary tale of theological ambiguity, if not heterodoxy; to others, he represents a creative, if uneven, attempt to reconcile fidelity to the Reformed tradition with the intellectual battles of his day. However, it should be noted that throughout his turbulent career, he was a faithful Reformed minister and professor without any significant moral failings. The Huguenots appreciated Cameron’s ministry even when some Genevans and Dutch Reformed expressed misgivings. It is important to remember that early modern Reformed theology was not monolith but continued to develop as new sciences and philosophies entered European thought. Perhaps the best tribute on this anniversary is to read him afresh (after learning some Latin!), not only through the lens of Amyraldianism or his later critics, but as a pastor-theologian who sought to confess the gospel of Christ faithfully in his own age.

Endnotes

[1] Herman Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics, 4 vols., trans. John Vriend, ed. John Bolt (Baker, 2003–2008), 1:186–87, 4:71.

[2] Robert Wodrow, Collection Upon the Lives of the Reformers and Most Eminent Ministers of the Church of Scotland, 3 vols. (Glasgow, 1834–48), 2:81.

[3] François Laplanche, “Antiquité et vérité dans la controverse de Cameron,” in Conflits politiques, controverses religieuses: Essais d’histoire européenne aux 16e-18e siècles, eds. Ouzi Elyada and Jacques Le Brun (Éditions de l’Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales, 2002), 131–42, 131. Cited by Albert Gootjes, “John Cameron (ca. 1579–1625) and the French Universalist Tradition,” in The Theology of the French Reformed Churches: From Henri IV to the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes (Reformation Heritage, 2014), 169–96, 169.

[4] The following biographical sketch follows the aforementioned Wodrow biography.

[5] Wodrow (Collection, 2:107) tantalizingly suggests that Cameron picked this position up while in Heidelberg. This would hardly be surprising given that the denial of IAOC was the position of many renowned Heidelbergians, including Zachary Ursinus, Caspar Olevianus, and David Pareus. Cf. Gert van den Brink, “Obedience, Punishment, and Merit: The Heidelberg Catechism on the Imputation of the Active Obedience of Christ,” Journal of Reformed Theology 18.4 (2024): 279–301.

[6] Gootjes, “John Cameron (ca. 1579–1625) and the French Universalist Tradition,” in The Theology of the French Reformed Churches, 173.

[7] John Cameron, “Lectori Salutem,” in Amica Collatio de Gratiae et Voluntatis Humanae Concursu in Vocatione & Wuibusdam Annexis . . . (Leiden, 1622).

[8] Cameron, Τα Σωζομενα Sive Opera (Geneva, 1658), 720, Thesis IX.

[9] Cameron, Opera, 720, Thesis X.

[10] “Epistola Facultatis Theologicae Academiae Leydensis ad Cameronem” in Cameron, Opera, 709.

[11] For an overview of how Cameron’s position is both embraced and modified among the later Saumur theologians, see esp. Albert Gootjes, Claude Pajon (1626–1685) and the Academy of Saumur: The First Controversy over Grace (Brill, 2014).

[12] Albert Gootjes, “The Theologian’s Private Cabinet: The Development and Early Reception of John Cameron’s Universalism,” in The Doctrine of Election in Reformed Perspective: Historical and Theological Investigations of the Synod of Dordt 1618–1619, ed. Frank van der Pol (Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2019), 137–64, 153.

[13] John Cameron, Praelectionum …, 3 vols. (Saumur, 1626–28), 3:571–88. Republished in Cameron, Opera, 530–35.

[14] Andre Rivet, Disputationes Tredecim, De Justa & Gratiosa Dei Dispensatione, circa Salutem Generis Humani in Opera Theologica, 3 vols. (Rotterdam, 1651–60), II:1167–68 (Disp. VI, Theses 9 and 10).

[15] I make a similar point when trying to distinguish Amyraldianism from English Hypothetical Universalism: “Amyraldianism and English Hypothetical Universalism: What’s the Difference?” Modern Reformation (2022): https://www.modernreformation.org/resources/articles/amyraldianism-and-english-hypothetical-universalism-whats-the-difference.

[16] Cf. Louis Cappel, Moïse Amyraut, and Josué de la Place, Syntagma Thesium Theologicarum in Academia Salmuriensi …, 2 vols. (Saumur, 1665).

[17] Gootjes, “John Cameron (ca. 1579–1625) and the French Universalist Tradition,” in The Theology of the French Reformed Churches, 189.

[18] Robert Baillie’s letter to Mr. William Spang, October 24, 1645, in The Letters and Journals of Robert Baillie, ed. David Laing, 3 vols. (Edinburgh, 1841), II:324.

[19] See John Davenant, “Davenant’s Response to the French Reformed Churches about the Will of God towards Human Sinners,” in On the Death of Christ & Other Atonement Writings, ed. Michael J. Lynch (Davenant Press: 2024), 347–55.

[20] Davenant, “Davenant’s Response to the French Reformed Churches,” in On the Death of Christ, 351–52.

[21] Cf. Gootjes, Claude Pajon (1626–1685) and the Academy of Saumur, 133–67.

[22] Cameron, Opera, 724.

Michael J. Lynch is a member of Emmanuel OPC in Wilmington, DE. He is teacher of classical languages and humanities at Delaware Valley Classical School. Ordained Servant Online, October, 2025.