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CHAPTER 1

QUESTION 1 What Is the Difference between "Calvinism" and the "Reformed Tradition"?

Since "Calvinism" is an easily misunderstood term, we need to define it carefully, especially distinguishing it from "Reformed," a word with broader connotations than "Calvinism." Calvinism is a movement set on recovering the Bible's understanding of the relationship between a sovereign God and responsible sinners. It spans many centuries and has been affirmed by pastors and theologians from a variety of church backgrounds.

"Reformed" vs. "Calvinist"

We need to clarify two essential words: "Reformed" and "Calvinist." Philip Benedict notes that the followers of John Calvin did not prefer the latter term. Instead, they styled "themselves variously the evangelical, reformed, evangelical reformed, or reformed Catholic church, the term reformed emerging as the most common label" in the latter part of the sixteenth century. "Reformed," then, has a historically rooted genesis. These churchmen sought to distinguish themselves from both Catholics and Lutherans.

"Reformed" often has connotations that are beyond the debate between Calvinism and Arminianism over soteriology. John R. de Witt, for example, identifies seven key distinctive markers of the Reformed tradition. First, it stresses not only the truthfulness of Scripture but also that the Bible must be followed in its entirety. Second, God is completely sovereign. The Reformed tradition insists that "nothing can stop or retard the progress of the gathering of his elect people, the building of his church, the coming of his kingdom." Third, God's grace towards his elect children is invincible. Fourth, Christians must submit to Jesus as Lord, not just hold on to him as Savior. We can't have the latter apart from the former. Fifth, there is a distinction between biblical law and gospel. Fundamentally, the law teaches us how God desires for his children to live. Sixth, God has given his people the "cultural mandate" so that the church would impact society for God's glory (see Gen. 1:28). Seventh, the Reformed tradition has a distinct view of pastoral ministry "and of the life of the church in relation to it," which is marked by a particular form of church order.

I. John Hesselink similarly offers five "characteristics and distinctive emphases" of the Reformed tradition. First, it is God-centered, especially in its emphasis that God has to sovereignly make sinners willing to come to Christ. Second, it bases life and ministry on Scripture. Third, it teaches that doctrine must impact how one lives. Fourth, it develops a particular view of the individual Christian's relationship to the surrounding culture such that the believer should seek to glorify God in every facet of his or her life, whether he or she is called to be a bricklayer or a missionary. Finally, it has a particular view of the church, most commonly seen in Presbyterian ecclesiology, with its emphasis on both teaching elders and ruling elders and their particular relationship to the congregation.

Both de Witt and Hesselink alert us to the fact that "Reformed" is about more than just how one comes to be saved by Jesus. It involves worldview distinctives and the cultural mandate (which we will not address in this book). It also has much to do with a particular vision of what the church is. According to Benedict, "At its core was the conviction that God's holy word made clear the form of worship expected from his children. ... The gratitude they owed [God] in return should inspire them to serve him in all their deeds, to worship in the manner he had decreed, and to shun all false devotion and idolatry." In other words, part of "being Reformed" is that one follows the "regulative principle," which is simply the belief that God in Scripture has regulated both how the church is to be organized and how the church is to worship him. In this way, the Reformed were different from Lutherans who assumed that as long as their worship practices were not clearly prohibited biblically, it fine to use them in their liturgy. "Reformed," in part then, has to do with one's vision of the church and worship.

Richard Muller made a similar point in critiquing the notion of a "Reformed Baptist." Even though such a Baptist's soteriology might be orthodox, that individual fails to see it as part of a larger complex of ideas that are antithetical to his or her Baptist identity. Reformed Baptists are out of line, for example, with the Reformed confessions, which

are carefully embodied patterns of teaching, drawn from Scripture and brought to bear on the life of the church. They are, in short, interpretations of the whole of Christian existence that cohere in all of their points. If some of the less-famous points of Reformed theology, like the baptism of infants, justification by grace alone through faith, the necessity of a thankful obedience consequent upon our faith and justification (the "third use of the law"), the identification of the sacraments as means of grace, the so-called amillennial view of the end of the world, and so forth, are stripped away or forgotten, the remaining famous five [i.e., the five points of Calvinism] make very little sense.

De Witt, Hesselink, and Muller rightly emphasize that "Reformed" has much broader connotations than "Calvinism," avenues of the Reformed tradition that we are not going to travel in our study. For this reason, throughout the rest of the book I will forego the term "Reformed" and use "Calvinism" to identify the distinctive doctrinal position this book is intended to explain and endorse.

Why "Calvinism"?

I still need to answer the question, Why are you using a label to define a doctrinal viewpoint based on one particular person? Later, we will see just how important John Calvin is for the tradition that takes his name. For now, we can note that Calvin's formulation of essential doctrines regarding salvation was so clearly manifested and beautifully articulated in his magnum opus, The Institutes of the Christian Religion (1559), and he was so active in defending his views from the Bible against Catholic, Lutheran, and Anabaptist opponents that his way of understanding God's relationship to sinful humanity quickly came to be called by the shorthand name, "Calvinism."

The next two chapters will define what I intend to communicate when I speak of "Calvinism." Much of the rest of the book attempts to explain and defend it. For now, though, I can say with B. B. Warfield, a nineteenth- and twentieth-century Calvinist theologian, that

Whoever believes in God; whoever recognizes in the recesses of his soul his utter dependence on God; whoever in all his thought of salvation hears in his heart of hearts the echo of the soli Deo gloria of the evangelical profession — by whatever name he may call himself, or by whatever intellectual puzzles his logical understanding may be confused — Calvinism recognizes as implicitly a Calvinist, and as only requiring to permit these fundamental principles — which underlie and give its body to all true religion — to work themselves freely and fully out in thought and feeling and action, to become explicitly a Calvinist.

"Calvinism," then, is a particular way of understanding how a sinner is saved that differs from Catholicism, Lutheranism, and Arminianism. Arminians, especially, forced the followers of Calvin to search the Scripture to answer the question of the relationship between a sovereign God and sinful humans in an individual's salvation. J. I. Packer stresses that the two systems are antithetical to one another. Calvinism preaches a God who sovereignly saves his elect, whereas Arminianism teaches that God gives all fallen people the ability to do what they need to do in order to cooperate with God in their salvation. Calvinism proclaims that in salvation the three Persons of the Trinity are united in their saving acts towards the same people ("election by the Father, redemption by the Son, and calling by the Holy Spirit") which secures the elect's salvation; Arminianism divides the objects of affection of the three Persons ("the objects of redemption being all mankind; of calling, all who hear the gospel; of election, those who respond"). Packer's summary is apt:

The two theologies thus conceive the plan of salvation in quite different terms. One makes salvation depend on the work of God, the other on a work of man; one regards faith as part of God's gift of salvation, the other as man's own contribution to salvation; one gives all the glory of saving believers to God, the other divides the praise between God, who, so to speak, built the machinery of salvation, and man, who by believing operated it.

Arminianism asserts "synergism," the idea that human salvation is the result of the cooperation between the gracious, sovereign God and renewed human freedom. Calvinism, alternatively, affirms "monergism," the biblical reality that God alone acts to save spiritually dead people whom he's elected to be his own. Calvinism, in other words, is just shorthand expressing the biblical reality that God saves his people, the ones he has eternally chosen to belong to him, the ones for whom his Son died. It's the life-giving truth of Ephesians 2:4: "but God." It's the soul-comforting reality of Romans 8:28: "we know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose," and of Romans 8:39 that nothing "will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord." It's the praise-inspiring, hope-giving certainty of Galatians 2:20: "I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me."

This is what the rest of this book means by "Calvinism."

It is the same poetic theology of hymns such as "A Debtor to Mercy Alone" by Augustus Toplady (1740–1778):

A debtor to mercy alone,
Of covenant mercy I sing;
Nor fear, with Thy righteousness on,
My person and off'ring to bring.
The terrors of law and of God With me can have nothing to do;
My Savior's obedience and blood Hide all my transgressions from view

The work which His goodness began,
The arm of His strength will complete;
His promise is Yea and Amen,
And never was forfeited yet.
Things future, nor things that are now,
Nor all things below or above,
Can make Him His purpose forgo,
Or sever my soul from His love.

My name from the palms of His hands Eternity will not erase;
Impressed on His heart it remains In marks of indelible grace.
Yes, I to the end shall endure,
As sure as the earnest is giv'n;
More happy, but not more secure,
The glorified spirits in heav'n.

The "Calvinism" of This Book

In researching and writing this book, I have employed numerous sources from soteriological Calvinists. If you peruse the footnotes, you will notice that most of them span in time from the sixteenth to the twenty-first century. I didn't intentionally try to have sources from each of these periods, but you'll notice, for example, John Calvin from the sixteenth century, Francis Turretin from the seventeenth, Jonathan Edwards from the eighteenth, Robert Dabney from the nineteenth, J. I. Packer from the twentieth, and Roger Nicole from the twenty-first. Beyond that, I refer to "Calvinists" who predated Calvin in the sixth century up to the Reformation of the sixteenth century. You'll also see that some of them are Presbyterian or Reformed, some Congregationalist, some Baptist, some Anglican, and others are non-denominational in orientation. In fact, Augustine and others referenced in Question 14 were Catholics! In other words, I have intentionally tried to support my biblical case with a variety of sources to guard myself from presenting a minority position within Calvinism.

Additionally, I have often used two Calvinistic confessional documents that have garnered broad support among Calvinists. The first, the Canons of the Synod of Dort (1618–19), were written directly to controvert the new movement of Arminianism. It has confessional status in the Dutch Reformed tradition. The second, the Westminster Confession of Faith (1646), was a product of English Puritans (primarily Presbyterians, but some others too) during an unusual period of Puritan control in England. The Westminster Confession, which has confessional status in Presbyterian churches, is probably the most significant confessional document in English-speaking churches because of its broad influence. Twelve years after its production, in 1658, English Congregationalists led by John Owen revised it slightly and released it as the Savoy Declaration. Eager to show that they were similar to their Presbyterian and Congregationalist brethren, English Baptists used both Westminster and Savoy as the basis for their Second London Baptist Confession, often referred to as the 1689 Confession because of its year of public release. The Westminster–Savoy–1689 tradition agrees on almost all matters of soterio-logical significance. Given its influence in the English-speaking world, I have used the Westminster Confession frequently as an expression of Calvinistic thought in this book.

REFLECTION QUESTIONS

1. Do you think the distinction between "Reformed" and "Calvinistic" is important? Why?

2. How would you define a "Reformed" Christian in your own words?

3. Do you think Warfield is correct in his quotation above, or is he a bit arrogant? Why?

4. How do you think that your own history with Calvinism will impact your interaction with the material in the rest of the book? Are there particular aspects of your own journey you especially need to be aware of as you consider Calvinism?

5. Have you read the Westminster Confession of Faith (or its Congregationalist or Baptist derivatives)? If not, it might be helpful to read a copy.

QUESTION 2

What Are the Five Points of Calvinism?

The "five points of Calvinism" are a summary of Calvinists' response to the Arminian view of the manner in which sinners are saved. They are not the gospel, but they are important for how we understand the gospel, how we think of God, how we navigate the difficulties of life, and how we worship our Lord. The five points supremely remind us that from beginning to end "salvation belongs to the Lord" (Jonah 2:9). God chose his people for salvation (1) out of the helpless state of their sin (2) simply because he desired to save them and not due to anything he saw in them. (3) He sent his Son to atone for all their sins. (4) He calls them to himself in the gospel and overcomes their sinful resistance. (5) And he preserves them in the faith until he brings them to be with him eternally in heaven. These are the five points.

The Ironies of the Five Points of Calvinism

Ironies abound in labeling these truths the "five points of Calvinism." First, even though I think the five points are all found in John Calvin's writings, he never summarized his beliefs using these categories. Second, when Calvinists came up with the "five points" they were not intending to summarize everything about Calvinistic theology. Instead, they were responding to five attacks on their faith from a group of Arminians. Arminians are, in a sense, responsible for the five points of Calvinism. Third, even though many students remember the five points by the TULIP mnemonic (total depravity, unconditional election, limited atonement, irresistible grace, and the perseverance of the saints), that was not originally a summary of Calvinism. The tulip as a memory device (which would have been very fitting since the Dutch are known for their beautiful tulips and the Synod of Dort took place in the Netherlands) would not have worked in Latin, which was the language in which the five points were originally written. TULIP was developed later, and it is probably not the most helpful way to summarize the five points, as our exposition below will show.

TULIP, then, is prone to misunderstanding. Timothy Paul Jones and Daniel Montgomery suggest that its genesis dates to 1905 when Cleland McAfee first summarized Calvinism's five points using this TULIP acrostic:

T Total depravity U Universal sovereignty L Limited atonement I Irresistible grace P Perseverance of the saints

In fact, Calvinists had summarized Dort's findings differently for generations. In 1895, prominent Calvinist theologian Robert L. Dabney published a booklet on the five points of Calvinism. He was not willing to truncate the doctrine into a simple mnemonic but often provided several summary points. Dabney, first of all, spoke of "original sin, total depravity, and inability of the will." Not denying human agency, he denied the fallen sinner's ability to do any good on his own. Second, he considered "the nature and agency of the moral revolution, named effectual calling and regeneration." Such a divine intervention is essential to reverse "the original dispositions which hitherto prompted the soul to choose sin and reject godliness." Third, he noted "God's election" of individuals to salvation which Scripture teaches is both "unconditioned and sovereign." Fourth, Dabney discussed "particular redemption" while, fifth, he summarized the "perseverance of the saints." TULIP was not sacrosanct.

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Excerpted from "40 Questions About Calvinism"
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Copyright © 2019 Shawn D. Wright.
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