Methodists and Pentecostals characteristically affirm Arminian theology, that God's saving grace is offered to all, that Christ died for everyone (universal atonement), and that human beings, enabled by grace, are genuinely free to accept or reject salvation. Named for the Dutch theologian Jacob Arminius, the position holds that God's predestination is grounded in his foreknowledge of who will believe, and that grace, though necessary and prior, can be resisted. It thus affirms real human responsibility in salvation while insisting that the initiative and power belong to God.
Jacobus Arminius taught theology at the University of Leiden until his death in 1609, and the year after, his followers formalized his positions in the Remonstrance of 1610, a document setting out five articles, on election, the extent of the atonement, human depravity, the resistibility of grace, and the possibility of falling from grace, that they presented to the Dutch government as a request for toleration within the Reformed church; the Synod of Dort convened in response and, rejecting the Remonstrants' articles point by point, produced the five counter-points later summarized in English by the acronym TULIP, so the two positions have been defined against each other, article by article, since their very first formal confrontation.