Lambeth Articles

At the time, there was controversy between Calvinists and non-Calvinists over predestination, and the Lambeth Articles were written to clarify the church's official teaching.

[1] There was an Arminian minority (notably William Barret, Peter Baro, John Overall and Antonio del Corro), influenced by the teachings of Dutch theologian Jacobus Arminius, which challenged the prevailing Calvinism.

[4] To settle the controversy, the heads of Cambridge University sent Whitaker and Tyndall to meet with John Whitgift, the archbishop of Canterbury, and other clergy at Lambeth Palace in London.

[11] In his 1958 work Reformation and Reaction in Tudor Cambridge, historian Harry Porter argued that the Lambeth Articles were a failed attempt by a Calvinist minority to force their views on the rest of the church.

[12][13] According to Peter Lake, the Lambeth Articles represent a compromise between the Cambridge theologians and Whitgift, both of whom shared common Calvinist assumptions.

The Lambeth Articles illustrated Whitgift's belief that "the opinions of every English divine of significance could be accommodated, without undue strain, within a framework of thought that was recognizably Calvinist".